big picture thinking

Category: war

The following is speculative. Bear with me. (The pun will become obvious.)

If the Dems are right, the Russians meddled.
If the Reps are right, the Russians meddled.

Whoever is right wins the senate.
If it’s the Dems, Trump is impeached and the Russian collusion story lives on.
If it’s the Reps, the Dems are discredited and the Russian collusion story lives on.

If Bernie the socialist had become the Dems candidate, would the Russian collusion narrative have been put forth by the Reps? Is this why they would have preferred Bernie over HRC? Either way, it is a minor point and a moot point.

Russian-backed rebels are said to have shot down MH-17.

Russians are said to have been behind the Maidan and to have invaded Crimea (Crimean elections notwithstanding.)

Russians were implicated with Carter Page, which is why the FBI used him as an informant.

Russians are said to have spied on the US and hacked into critical systems (Panda was mentioned twice as a non-sequitor in a recent Dutch MH-17 report.) Guccifer was Romanian. [There is no doubt that all countries do engage in offensive cyber attacks and probes, including Russia.]

Russians were accused of hacking into the DNC (later proved to be false) and passing information to Julian Assange who was accused of being a Russian agent.

The lawyer Donald Trump Jr. met with (Natalia Vilenskaya) under false pretenses was Russian. It was a set-up.

Russians are said to have offered the NSA dirt on Trump as well as the NSA hacking tools (which could leave subtle fingerprints making it look like the hack originated from any state or individual actor.)

Russians are said to be involved in Uranium one (private businessmen.)

Russians are said to have pranked Adam Schiff (actually Ukrainians.)

Who are all these Russians? All the Russians who are known or have been named are private citizens. Do any of them officially represent Russia? Are they spies? Are they even Russian? What’s the difference? Russia… Russia… Russia… and the band played on.

Who wants to make Russia (an ally of Iran) the enemy? The neocons and their supporters do. There are neocons on both sides of the aisle. Obama was a neocon, as were the Bushs’.
Who haven’t we heard from since the elections? The neocons and their supporters (they’ve let their media do their talking.) The media, it seems, have been talking about nothing but Russia.

Victoria Nuland is now (since Jan. 19th, 2018) the CEO of CNAS.
She engineered the coup in Ukraine and has, more than anyone, spoiled Ukraine/Russian relations.
CNAS has advocated for Russian sanctions, and has played a very large part in middle-east policy, as well as policy towards China.

“Ukrainian politician Viktor Medvedchuk, who represents Kiev in the humanitarian subgroup at the negotiations in Minsk, said that the legislation “puts an end to the attempts to peacefully resolve” the conflict in eastern Ukraine.”

So the neo-cons want to take out seven countries ending with Iran.
They also want to provoke Russia through sanctions and, with the help of NATO, build up military strength on its borders. But to what ends?

Hunter Biden, Joe’s son, was made a director on Ukraine’s largest private gas company’s board (Burisma Holdings) as head of legal affairs. All of Russia’s gas exports to northern Europe used to go through pipelines crossing Ukraine. Since the coup, pipelines have been diverted to pass through Turkey, giving Turkey full control of both middle-east oil and Russian gas being piped (over land) into Europe.
Turkey was denied entry into the EU, but remains a NATO member, although that may soon change. This makes Europe vulnerable to Asia, and would help push their alliance towards the east.

Although this hurts Ukraine economically, more importantly, it puts US gas producers at a disadvantage in Europe. If Russia could be goaded into a war with Ukraine (a US proxy,) the US could stave off the threat posed by China and Russia (and Iran) in forming a multi-polar world by increasing its European energy exports and setting up a new petro-dollar with Europe, except this time, Europe would be forced to buy US energy with US dollars. Europe would then be dependant on the US instead of Turkey, and China’s One-Belt-One-Road plan would be damaged beyond repair. Russia would be decimated on all fronts.

Didn’t this all start with Syria? The timing seems right. And just recently, the top officials from Russia’s intelligence services just showed up in D.C., after which Israel started attacking Syria (officially,) Turkey had a scuffle with American-led Kurds, and Russia lost two soldiers in a firefight with American-led rebel forces in Syria.

The role Poland is playing should not be underestimated. American missiles on Polish soil pushing NATO right up to the Russian border, populist Poland’s tough stance against the globalist EU (the Polish leader Andrzej Sebastian Duda has been likened to a Polish Donald Trump,) not to mention to plane crash which took out almost the entire Polish government in Russia, in 2010. Could the CIA have been involved? [More on this later.]

This could be what Janet Yellen meant with her, ‘not in our lifetime’ statement. /s

While the Russian-collusion narrative and the FISA memo might be the biggest stories in recent American history, that which is hidden below, as is usually the case, seems to be far more meaningful to American interests. It could all be a ploy, no matter who won the election, to continue US hegemonic expansion and the new cold war well into this new American century. Trump may have even messed up the plans to frame HRC as the Russian colluder, as all the evidence is against her. If it were President Clinton in office, Russian collusion would have been easy to prove. Instead, we have the grotesque and acrimonious spectacle now under way.

Like a spork, North Korea (Nork) has more than one function on the world stage. But is it a tined spoon, or a bowled fork? Either way, it’s not the steak knife everybody is portraying it to be.

Ever since the Clinton presidency, NorK has been getting more than its fair share of the news cycle. The reasons given for this are not the same as the reality of the situation would indicate. Some introductory points to consider about the nation:

Nork has up to 10x the mineral wealth of Afghanistan, up to $10T USD worth.

Most of this wealth is in minerals which China now holds a near monopoly over.

War with NorK could do wonders for Trump’s image.

NorK is still technically at war with South Korea (SKor.)

SKor holds veto power over any military actions by its allies against NorK

NorK’s nuclear capabilities are near zero. This article goes into more detail on the subject. Even if they did choose to divert their limited resources to bomb-making, it would result in so few warheads that the threat they possess would not be worth having. The bluff achieved by setting off nuclear tests (comperable to 1940’s technology) has a far greater impact. If they do have an arsenal of nuclear tipped short-range missiles, it would only be a handful of stategic type nukes, enough to devastate small neighbouring countries or a group of ships, but easily shot out of the sky by allied defenses.

NorK’s record as far as missile tests go is abysmal. Their tests almost always fail, and their targeting is equally shoddy. Many industry analysts doubt they could hit a ship off their own coastline. This article summarizes the situation nicely. The missiles they regularly display in parades are not functional. The ones which are functional crash. NorK has never once put a functional warhead on a functioning missile.

As in Afghanistan, when mineralogical surveys showed a tremendous amount of wealth under the ground, the US suddenly showed great interest in waging war in order to introduce American interests to the region. As well as being geo-strategically important, NorK has been found to possess an enormous wealth of rare-earth minerals which China currently holds a near-monopoly over. Inserting American (SKor) companies would turn an enormous profit, but would also prevent Eurasian competitors from gaining access. Now that the middle-east is lost for the US, and the petro-dollar is teetering on the brink, America needs new sources of income and influence in Asia.

“If the U.S. and South Korea carry out strikes and try to overthrow the North Korean regime and change the political pattern of the Korean Peninsula, China will prevent them from doing so,” it said. -Global Times

“China should also make clear that if North Korea launches missiles that threaten U.S. soil first and the U.S. retaliates, China will stay neutral,” the Global Times, which is widely read but does not represent government policy, said in an editorial.

“Only the Republic of Korea can make the decision for military action on the Korean Peninsula,”[President Moon Jae-in] said, using the country’s formal name.

The story of North Korea, to paraphrase Skaespeare, is in many ways a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

The US will either find an excuse or fabricate an excuse to take over the country; the question is not about Kim Jong-un’s response, but rather the world’s.

The citizens of Yemen now face a new threat, as though life there was not already harsh enough. Over 300,000 Yemeni already suffer from cholera (40% of whom are under the age of 15,) and the estimates show that up to 500,000 could face immediate starvation as a result, or many more if conditions deteriorate further.

Resources from food programs had to be shifted in order to provide the necessary vaccine doses to combat the problem and contain the spread of the disease. A record nearly one million doses was put aside for the people of Yemen, but, as has just been announced, critical shortcomings in infrastructure and security have put the project in jeopardy. The Saudi coalition, actively supported by the US and UK, has not only targeted and bombed a large number of hospitals, but has closed off nearly all of Yemen’s seaports and airports making delivery of critical medicine and food practically impossible. Power shortages have crippled water treatment plants and hospitals which only exacerbates the problem. Lack of refrigeration also puts certain medicines out of reach. Problems with the central bank have prevented healthcare workers from being paid, and they now depend upon humanitarian organizations for help, as well.

“Yemen is facing critical stoppages of hospitals and a lack of doctors and nurses. The health system has essentially collapsed, with an estimated 55 percent of facilities closed due to damage, destruction or lack of funds. Some 30,000 health care workers have not been paid in nearly a year and no funding has been provided to keep basic infrastructure such as hospitals, water pumping and sanitation stations operating.” -U.N. chief of aid, Stephen O’Brien

The initial shipment of 500,000 vaccine doses which is already in Djibouti would probably be re-routed to Africa instead of going to the war-torn country, according to WHO spokesperson Christian Lindmeier. The vaccine is an oral form and is intended as a preventative measure as it would do no good once the disease strikes. The vaccine only immunizes about 65% of those who take it as well, so the problem is likely to keep growing before it is eventually controlled.

“The speed of the spread of the disease is unprecedented,” Doctor Nevio Zagaria, the World Health Organization’s representative in Yemen said.

The situation is further complicated because deciding who gets the limited supply of essentials is likely to cause tensions between the warring parties.

The UN sought $2.1 billion to provide food to the millions people facing famine in Yemen but has received only a third of that amount. Up to eight million people are at risk of starvation. An appeal for $250 million in funding for cholera relief has only raised $47 million. Compared to the hundreds of billions which Saudi-Arabia has spent on weapons (from the US, the UK, Canada, and others,) it seems like a drop in the bucket. Saud has, ironically, pledged $3 billion to alleviate hunger in Yemen, but nobody expects much of it to go to the people of Yemen. The money will probably be spent on rebuilding infrastructure after the conclusion of hostilities and will certainly be given to British and American companies, instead.

The people know this somehow, and it leads to the mistrust which only amplifies the problem of disease. Many people in need of aid would simply refuse it claiming that the western powers who were there to help actually wanted to kill them all and their children, so they routinely refuse vaccines and medical attention. Trust, or lack of it, has become an issue which further increases the misery of those so affected. There is a great mistrust of the schizophrenic west who bomb them by day and seek to offer their help by night. Using illegal munitions like cluster-bombs and white phosphorus (as against the Palestinians) does not help the situation either.

The question raised is that with millions of Yemeni susceptible to cholera, will one million doses actually be enough? Originally, 3.4 million doses were requested, but due to simultaneous outbreaks in other countries such as Somalia, Malawi, Mozambique, and South Sudan, the stresses placed on supply, production, and transport infrastructure are overwhelming. Continued war, of course, leads to all these miseries and is the greatest continuous threat, and with continued weapons sales to the middle-east, the end of their suffering is nowhere in sight.

Let’s not forget that when there is no food, the only way for some of the older children to avoid starvation is to join the rebel forces. This is portrayed in the media as a recruitment of child-soldiers. The oppressed rebels are always to blame when dealing with regimes and empire.

Adding to all these horrible facts and adding to the prolonged misery of the people caught as prisoners in the war zone is that journalists have been barred from entering the country. This also serves a purpose, though; it means that all the atrocities committed against Yemeni civilians by western powers will go unnoticed. There will be nobody to report on the illegal weapons and munitions, nobody to recruit outside sympathy and financial assistance to those suffering, nobody to speak for the voiceless masses, and nobody to tell the story of an atrocious situation in horrific conditions under the oppressive impulse of invading forces.

American forces supply jets, bombs, illegal and inhuman munitions, training, and even refueling planes. British forces supply much of the same. Even Israel supplies pilots. Canada has provided transport trucks. Many other countries such as Qatar have contributed and are helping Saudi Arabia restore the deposed and oppressive government to power despite the will of the people. As the Americans said with Egypt’s Mubarak, “He might be a dictator, but he’s OUR dictator.”

So why does the west support this war? Why are we selling our weapons to these forces? Why are we involved in this ‘legitimate’ civil war (unlike the mercenary war in Syria,) if such a term can be used? Why are we involved, once again, in regime change halfway across the world? Why have we formed this coalition of the usual suspects? In a word: Iran. Iran (read: Hezbollah) backs the Huthi rebels. It is simply another proxy war, another reason to vilify our enemies, and once again, the people paying for it, living in misery, suffering through disease, starvation, death, and destruction, are innocent and helpless civilians.

Help shine a light any way you can. Use social media to do the job that the press either will not or cannot do, lobby your governments, donate to relief funds, crowdfund the purchase of BAE or Raytheon, do whatever it takes, do whatever you can. Us little guys should stick together against the forces of tyranny; we are their only defense and their very last hope.

I often wonder how it is that liberty-minded people end up supporting fascists. It’s not so hard to see, really; when presented with two choices, people have to pick, even if neither choice is optimal. This notion is the key to understanding the world as it is.

This notion is not foreign to many of us. Many governments and their elections are based on this system. It is often said that a bird needs both its wings to fly, both the left-wing, and the right-wing. Divide and conquer is the applicable cliché here. If you dislike both the liberal and the conservative candidate, what is there left for you to do but stay home? Doing that, while symbolically relevant, will not change the outcome – an outcome which will determine the course of your life despite your lack of participation in it. After all, even if only ten percent of eligible voters vote, winning six percent of the nation’s voices is enough to rule them all. That’s democracy; well not really, but that’s what democracy has come to represent to most of us these days.

Taken to another level, this dichotomy can be implemented towards much more nefarious objectives.

Take the Bolsheviks, for example. They overthrew the ruling elite, killed the Czar and his family, and decided they would share the wealth. (In reality, it didn’t have the desired effect, but I’m trying to keep this article under a million words.) What’s important here is the spirit in which the revolution was undertaken: taking the power out of the hands of the elite, and dropping it into the laps of the people. They did not know what to do with this power, and so were subverted, but we are more sophisticated than they were; or at least, we have a chance to be.

World War II and the construct of Nazism, which was almost entirely an Anglo-American creation, had at their roots many causes, but had only one aim, to stem the tide of Communism. The ruling elite did not want to see the revolutionary mind-set grow and spill over into their own countries, lest they receive the same treatment as the Czar.

[More specifically, there was open support and admiration for Hitler himself (despite the fact that National Socialist party was a party for the workers, and one which promised revolution – most knew this to be a political ploy) from such notable individuals and families as: Lord Randolph Hearst; Prescott Bush (son of the original merchant of death, Remington’s Samuel Bush, and father of George HW Bush #41, and grandfather to George W Bush #43;) the Harrimans; the Dulles’; JP Morgan; JD Rockefeller; WA Harriman; the Carnegies; the Rothschilds; the entire British royal family; and on, and on, and on, and on, and on.

The list of large American businesses which dealt openly with Nazi Germany is long and staggering and includes: MGM; Coca-Cola; GM; IBM; AT&T; Nestle; Ford; Pratt and Whitney; Douglas; Bendix Corp.; Woolworth; Dow; Du Pont; Union Carbide; Westinghouse; General Electric; Gilette; Goodrich; Alcoa; Singer; Eastman Kodak; ITT; Standard Oil; Sullivan & Cromwell; Dillon Read & Co.; Chase Bank; Union Bank of New York… etc – more details here. Not to mention the large number of British, Swedish, and Swiss companies and banks which did the same.]

Therein, we have the foundation of the dichotomy which is still in play to this day, namely communism vs. fascism.

Now, one would be hard-pressed to find very many people in America (or in most of the Anglo-world) who would openly claim to be either communists or fascists, but that has not always been the case. Both movements, at certain times, had found large numbers of Americans in support. (Ironically, both the left and right movements accuse each other of fascism.)

Given the choice, and knowing what you now know about the roots of communism (don’t forget that Karl Marx was German,) would you choose to be a fascist or a commie?

There is currently a movement in the United States for the protection of constitutional rights which have been whittled down by both the Bush and Obama administrations since 9/11 and the passing of the so-called Patriot Act. The right of free speech, the right to bear arms and many other tenets of the constitution are seemingly under attack by proponents of the security state and the far-left. The people fighting to keep these rights have been labelled as the alt-right movement, or extreme conservatives. For the most part, they believe that the US is and should remain a republic instead of being a representational democracy. Many take offense at the term ‘democracy’ as it is applied to their country, as I myself learned the hard way. These people are certainly not commies in the true or the traditional sense, and they consider that an offensive term as well. Neither do they consider themselves fascists, even if others tend to label them as such, for some strange and incomprehensible reason.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, one would be hard-pressed, outside of China, to find very many communists left. There are certainly a great deal of fascists, and Europe is considered by most to be socialistic, but the communist bogey-man has faded into the night, as it were. New terminology had to be devised, since people cannot be expected to contribute tax money to a military industry if there is nothing to defend against. Hence was the threat of terrorism born. But terrorists were not a big threat to the western world, despite demonstrations like 9/11, as lightning and five-year olds were statistically both responsible for more death and mayhem than were terrorists. More terror was needed to fuel the consumption of military-grade weapons systems by local governments to be used against their own citizens in order to keep them safe. Borders needed loosening and immigration needed to be accelerated, but not because people fleeing war zones such as Syria and Libya are terrorists, but because terrorists needed to be inserted into this population of migrants. Hence terrorism by Muslims and Sharia law could be the reason behind all the surveillance state’s new toys. [Cyber warfare is also closely related and should be quickly mentioned, but it deserves its own separate article.]

In come the squirrels. Many issues have been raised which further divide the globs from the pops, and it seems that the most prevalent is that of religious bigotry and racism. Nothing seems to divide as well as do race and religion. Nothing seems to distract as well, either. If TPTB could use race and religion as effectively as they have used communism and fascism in the past, this globalism thing would be a cake-walk. Bush #41 started to set this up in a speech he gave on March 6th, 2001, a speech largely dedicated to promoting the success of Operation Desert Storm.

But there was inevitably going to be resistance, resistance to the influx of immigrants in these difficult economic times, to the build-up of civilian police force armaments, and to modern surveillance tactics. This resistance had to be countered, and so a new Hegelian concept needed to be introduced.

The new terms-du-jour which have emerged are globalists and populists. It is the populists who have taken up the ancient role of the communists, as the new threat to global stability, and are seen as ‘the last great problem,’ at least as far as the globalists are concerned. The globalists, of course, are the new fascists. They deny this association of course, but as we say, “If the shoe fits…” Populists fight for national sovereignty while globalists fight for a global UN parliament and a new world order (a term first used by Bush #41 ten years to the day before 9/11,) which Barack Obama referred to as an international order. Obama, Bush #43, Clinton, Bush #41, Reagan, and Carter are all globalists, and Trump is a populist. The UNPA (about which I have written much) is pushing for a global parliament to be run by non-elected political representatives and NGOs in order to better represent the voice of the people at the UN. This is disingenuous, at best. The claim is that since ordinary people have no voice at the UN in its present configuration, the people should be represented by lobbyists and corporations. This claim, despite already having been implemented in the European parliament, is both laughable and transparent.

So where am I going with this? Well, considering that the world has, since WWII at least, been mostly split between communists and fascists (democracies being a weak compromise between the two,) and given that the new paradigm is Christianity vs. Islam, we need to take a step back and gain some perspective on this. Muslims are not the enemy, Iran or North Korea are not the enemy, Russia is most certainly not the enemy, nor is China, the left and the right are not enemies, and populists are not only not the enemy, but are the only ones who have even a slight chance of standing against the true enemy. The enemy is the same as it ever was. The enemy of liberty, the enemy of sovereignty, the enemy of financial independence is and has always been TPTB. Tyranny, plain and simple. And as long as they have us fighting each other, they can quietly go about their business, as they always have, to take it all for themselves.

When we are successful, and we will be, we have a real chance at this new world order; an order in which a credible United Nations can use its peace-keeping role to fulfill the promise and vision of the UN’s founders.

-George H.W. Bush #41

n.b. The founders of the UN just happened to be those who ‘rid’ the world of fascism: FDR, Winston Churchill, and Stalin. Fascism did not go away. The fascists won WWII, and went underground. Fascism took over Europe from Brussels. Fascism is more rampant now than it has ever been.

In 1971, the French sent a gunboat to New York harbour to get their gold back because the USA was over-extending itself as per the Bretton-Woods agreement. It was President Nixon who was not playing by the rules. In this example, it was the Vietnam war which was being funded but without enough gold to back the expenditures. The US was inflating its own currency. Since the Franc was pegged to the dollar and the dollar was pegged to the gold that America held, there wasn’t enough gold to maintain the value of the French currency. This is why the French acted. This was essentially the beginning of what we now know as central bank money, or modern fiat money.

Why mention all this? Well it seems to me that the Chinese are de-evolving in monetary terms, going back to a Bretton-Woods type system in order that they can play the role that the US played but with their allies, instead. For that to happen, they need to back their currency with gold, and so they will need as much as they can get. Russia has also spoken about a gold-backed ruble.

Gaddafi was in the process of creating a gold-backed pan-African currency, but Libya did not have the clout to withstand the American onslaught, and we all know what happened after that. China does.

If we exclude QEII, the largest land-owners in the world are Russia, China, the King of Saud, the King of Thailand, the King of Morocco, and the King of Oman. All of these countries have large Muslim populations; even Russia is about 15% Muslim. All of them have been involved with some form of gold-backed currency, or are currently talking about implementing one. China is going to do it for them, and unite Asia in the process.

This is why Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev said, at the UN, that the IMF must go and that the world reserve currency should no longer be dollars. He also said that the UN should be based in Asia. Kazakhstan is hugely rich in natural resources (oil, gold, uranium…) He gave this speech on the same day as Obama and Putin spoke, but nobody was listening.

This, in my opinion, is what we are seeing in China now. They are slowly trying to shed dollars without causing too much commotion. If they do it too quickly, they would lose a great deal of value in the process. Eventually, though, the dollar will be dumped. China did just get into the IMF’s basket, for credibility and support if nothing else, but this may be short-lived and not for the reasons most would think.

With Turkey looking east, they could collectively control all the oil and gas flowing into Europe (Turkish Stream pipeline,) and most of the water flowing into the middle-east. The east would have Europe by the short-and-curlies.

This is also why they want to ‘easternize’ Europe with a large influx of migrants. Terror is a serious issue for all these actors, not just an excuse for expansion like it is for America. Russia has an outpost called Ingushetia to guard against Chechen fighters. Even China has terror at its back door.

Energy-poor Europe really has no choice in the matter and America is powerless to stop it. This is what made Ukraine such a target. Russia is diverting all pipelines into Europe through Turkey instead of Ukraine, making the entire exercise there moot. This is what makes the middle-east, the Spratley Islands in the South China Sea, North Korea, and Lithuania so important to the west. This is why the west (and NATO) is trying to encircle Russia and break up Eurasia, but what’s the expression again…? A day late and a dollar short (pun definitely intended.)

One could draw a line from Beijing to Moscow and cross only one country, Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan may be where the new Prime Meridian passes, where the new UN headquarters might be located, and is where the world’s monopoly of low-enriched uranium (LEU) is kept. Buffett knows it, too. Kazakhstan is land-locked and so is very easy to defend.

It’s over.

China is starting to unwind, all of Eurasia will be dumping the dollar very soon (?this summer/fall?) the petro-dollar’s days are numbered (Saud has been in negotiations with Russia for years now over this very issue) and if America doesn’t wake up to this incontrovertible fact, war will be the only option. If the USA and NATO and the EU start making preparations now, perhaps there could be a way to draw this out nicely enough not to have to crash the western economy. They could also all be working behind the scenes together, east and west, knowing that the inevitable is coming. Hey, ya’ never know.

As it happens, last year, American private equity fund KKR bought Mexico’s Pemex Oil. They have secured rights to drill in the Gulf of Mexico, and now they are moving even further south. Venezuela seems to be the next target now that the Americans know they have lost the middle-east, and will soon have to leave.

“Seventy percent of Petropiar is owned by the state-run Petróleos de Venezuela, and 30% by its overseas partner, Chevron. The government has now offered to sell a portion of its shares to the Russian Rosneft, along with a stake in the rights to extract oil from the premium-grade Orinoco Oil Belt. This, of course, is no less than a stab in the back for Chevron. (Rosneft faces sanctions from the US, which, of course, Chevron does not.)

Venezuela has also expropriated shares belonging to ConocoPhillips, for which it has not yet paid, at the same time as they’re negotiating with a Japanese investment bank to obtain further funding.”

These deals, in the American perspective, are worth protecting and fighting over especially if Russia’s Rosneft gets control of some of the oil in the Americas.

The drill, dubbed “Operation: America United,” will involve the installation of a temporary military base on the triple border shared by the drill’s other participating nations: Peru, Brazil and Colombia.“

Clearly, the Americans know that their time under the petro-dollar scheme is winding down, and they are desperately seeking alternative sources of oil. Now that Erdogan has refused the EU membership and is looking east, even the Germans are moving their troops from Incirlik to Jordan. They too must sense that something is changing within NATO and in the middle-east.

All this talk of populism vs. globalism (I was caught up in it, too) is like so many squirrels scurrying to hide their nutz. This is also why we needed the king of all squirrels, Donald Trump, to completely dominate our lives. After two years of him dominating the main-stream media scene, much of the groundwork has been done quietly, and in the shadows.

Clapper has called AQAP (Al Qaeda on the Arab Peninsula) the greatest threat to US national interests… now it’s Russia. Quite a shift in so little time. But what was the AQAP remark all about? Weapons sales, of course.

Terror has been the excuse for small corrupt governments, like that of Yemen, to milk hegemons (either global like the US, or local like Saud) of their money to combat terror. While strikes against both civilians and terror groups lead to more recruitment, the terrorists (considered by locals as freedom-fighters) are increasing acts of terror (read: liberation) to further the cycle. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy and a perpetual wheel, and US military contractors salivate at the prospect. If war is the most profitable industry, that is where capital (and capitalism) will flow… moral compass be damned. A corporation can be sued by its shareholders for acts of morality which cost the company money. Let the poor defenseless suckers pay for it all. This is disaster capitalism at its finest, the strong picking on the weak. This is why there is a wealth gap, in the first place.

Meanwhile, the poorest suffer, but they fight, for what other choice is there? Abandoning sovereignty is not a choice, it is a consequence of defeat.

America’s Dangerous Game In Yemen – (25:01)

Prince Charles is one of the world’s leading arms dealers (47:15) and should be brought to answer for his deeds especially concerning Saud and their war with Yemeni people. Unfortunately, there exists no legal mechanism in England to accuse any member of the royal family of having broken the law. They are the law. The UK, USA, Turkey, and Canada, amongst others, have sold the Saudis all the weapons which are now being used against the innocent people of Yemen including illegal cluster bombs and white phosphorus munitions. The mainstream media are silent and, in so being, complicit.

There are many images which have been foisted upon the west through its media sources. We all remember the picture of the Syrian boy who washed up on a beach in Turkey.

There is also “Aleppo boy” who was rescued from the rubble after an airstrike. (What was the girl’s story? She was not as photogenic as Omran Daqneesh, and so was ignored by the media. An interesting article about how the White Helmets used the boy for propaganda against Assad can be found here.) Two equally important articles showing the White Helmets for who they REALLY are HERE and HERE.

These are, of course, just two of the horrible images of war in Syria. But releasing these images had a purpose, that of demonizing Assad.

There is another war going on. It is a war few people speak of. There is far less coverage of it in the news, but the effects this war has on its population are just as devastating. It is the war in Yemen.

On one side are the Huthis, an armed group whose members belong to a branch of Shi’a Islam known as Zayidism. The Huthis are allied with supporters of Yemen’s former President Ali Abdullah Saleh. On the other side are anti-Huthi forces that are allied with the current President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi and the Saudi Arabian-led coalition.

Members of the coalition include the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Jordan and Sudan. The USA and UK have been providing key intelligence and logistical support to the coalition.

The USA, UK, France, Spain, Canada and Turkey transferred nearly US$5.9 billion worth of arms to Saudi Arabia between 2015 and 2016, including drones, bombs, torpedoes, rockets and missiles, which risk being used to facilitate serious violations in Yemen.

Strangely enough, though the Amnesty International article I have quoted above is quite thorough, it fails to mention that many of the pilots flying Saudi-owned American jets, which seem to be indiscriminately bombing hospitals, schools, and markets, are from Israel.

So there we have it, all the countries currently fighting (or helping to fight) Assad in Syria (illegally) are now ganging up on a relatively small band of un-sophisticated fighters known as the Huthis, in Yemen.

There is, however, one notable exception absent from this coalition: the western media. In Syria, the media generates sympathy for civilians in order to discredit Assad; in Yemen, on the other hand, the coalition supports the government. Surely, if the truth about the situation there were to leak out, it would show the ‘allies’ for what they truly are. It would point the finger of atrocities straight at the west. It would show that WE are to blame (since the Huthis have no air-force.)

American cluster bombs and white phosphorous munitions, both illegal weapons of war, and both used by Israel against Palestinians, are now being used in Yemen by another US ally, Saudi Arabia. The effects of these weapons can be seen in the images at the end of this article.

So while massive resources go into scripting the overthrow of Assad in Syria and setting all sorts of traps for him (Ghouta, Khan Sheikoun, barrel bombs – because he has helicopters, etc…) the people of Yemen are forgotten and their images are forever put away, never to be shown for what they are.

As a follow-up to two recent articles (here and here) on Turkey, Eurasia, and the coming crash of the US$, please consider the following.

As Russia’s Sergey Glazyev said, “As soon as we and China dump the dollar, it will be the end of the US’ military might…” Keep that in mind as you read the following.

China’s current credit crisis causes concern for the world’s economies, but not for China. China can amass all the debt it wants in order to finance its economic revolution and the New Silk Road. There is no limit because the money it is using is free money. This is why they support shadow banking, why they lend enormous amounts to institutions, corporations, entrepreneurs, and citizens; it’s not their money they are lending. They are using their manufacturing sector to pull as much cash as possible out of the west and using that to finance their future. Their own foreign debt is financed by Americans paying interest on obligations. Even their US holdings were financed with American money. Trillions of dollar-store knick-knacks can buy a lot of T-bills. Merry Christmas.

Once they have squeezed all the blood they can out of the dollar, they have no need for the US anymore. This is when they will start calling in their US debt, gradually at first, but accelerating until the dollar is out of breath and collapses, well short of the finish line. This will kill the US dollar, and remove its ‘reserve’ status.

America owes China about $1 trillion, give or take, and owes Japan about $1.1 trillion. Japan is very close to China, both physically and culturally (in many respects – much closer than it is to America in any case.) This will become important in the near-future.

Eric Clapton – Nobody Knows You (3:19)

“The United States allowed China to become one of its biggest bankers because the American people enjoy low consumer prices. Selling debt to China funds federal government programs that allow the U.S. economy to grow. It also keeps U.S. interest rates low. But China’s ownership of the U.S. debt is shifting the economic balance of power in its favor. …Owning U.S. Treasury notes helps China’s economy grow by keeping its currency weaker than the dollar. It keeps Chinese exports cheaper than U.S. products. …China would not call in its debt all at once. If it did so, the demand for the dollar would plummet like a rock.”

America, as it turns out, is at China’s mercy. China and Russia have become very close, best buds, if you will. The New Silk Road is a plan to bring the Chinese economy to Europe’s doorstep. Beijing and Moscow are connected by a rail line which passes through Kazakhstan. Russia now controls most of the energy going into Europe through pipelines that run (or are being built) through Turkey. Turkey has a virtual stranglehold on the EU because it will have all the pipelines supplying European energy running through its territory as well as having control of the Euphrates river which delivers water to the middle-east. Because of Russian military strength, Turkey listens to Russia. Saud will soon see (or already does) that it makes a lot more sense to sell their oil to China and Europe, and now that Russia can protect them in the middle-east, they have no need for America anymore, nor Israel, for that matter. The petro-dollar will die the same death, America will leave the middle-east once and for all, and Israel will stop settling Arab land, one way or another. They will never have felt so alone. ISIS will be eradicated in short order, to boot.

Once the dollar is crippled, the stock markets will obviously take a nose-dive, but here’s where the insidious part of the plan goes into action – all western investors will be wiped out in one fell swoop. Sure lots of slick investors have a bearish hedging strategy against a Chinese credit crunch, but just think about it. If you are bullish and bet long stocks or dollars or whatever, you will lose it all; but even if you are bearish, what will you be paid with, dollars? Sure you will win all your bets, but your dollar rewards will then be worthless, too… and I haven’t even mentioned derivatives.

There will be nowhere left to turn. Only stackers will be able to eat, and only those heavily invested in crypto-currencies will manage to keep up their standards of living… in another country, of course.

In this new reverse alchemy, defenestration would become a popular pastime and paper gold would turn into lead, one bullet at a time.

Europe will suffer greatly as their currencies collapse, and Saudi and Russian energy will be very expensive (Saud has to make up all that money they’ve lost trying to kill US shale,) but they could still pull through. They might even sell a lot of luxury cars to the new billionaires in the east. Canada could also survive, as it could simply trade one global hegemon for another and sell its resources to China, instead. A very weak dollar would be good for exports, after all.

America, on the other hand, would finally be punished for all its bull-y-ing as city after city would very swiftly be turned into so many Detroits.

America would be rid of its arrogant bull’, and bears would once again roam free, smirking.

*UPDATE*

If anything ever goes wrong with the Chinese economy, they always have the option of selling their American holdings (T-bills) despite the fact that this would weaken USD.

Eurasia may be a new term all Americans will be forced to learn.
The Euro’s collapse may well be due to Turkey’s geo-political shift.
China’s debt crisis is no big deal, they’ll just liquidate their US holdings.

Kremlin advisor Sergey Glazyev reveals ‘cure for US aggression’
“The more aggressive the Americans are, the sooner they will see the final collapse of the dollar and by getting rid of the dollar this would be the only way for victims of American aggression to stop this onslaught. As soon as we and China dump the dollar, it will be the end of the US’ military might…”

“In objective terms, they are conducting a global hybrid war[an American invention, btw] and in subjective terms, this war is aimed at us. Moreover, as it always happens when a global leader is changed, the war is for control over rimland nations. During WWI and WWII, Britain acted as an instigator in a bid to keep its global leadership. Now the United States is doing the same. And Trump expresses these interests,” he said.”

Turkey is turning its back on the west which will have disastrous consequences for the US dollar and all of the EU’s central banks. The quadrillion dollar derivatives market is about to become the world’s biggest eraser, rubbing out the US and EU economy in one blow. Turkey controls all the ME oil flowing into Europe and most of the water flowing into the ME.

“Syrian opposition forces are ready to implement Russia’s proposal on establishing four zones for reducing tensions. Most armed opposition groups have already agreed to take part in creating these territories, the leadership of Syria’s opposition delegation, which is heading to Kazakhstan’s capital of Astana for a new round of talks on Wednesday (see below,) told Izvestia. Russian armed forces should control the zones, the Syrian parliament said. However, Damascus has refused to accept the participation of UN forces.”

“…satisfaction with the adoption of a Memorandum on establishing de-escalation zones. They noted that its implementation by all sides would strengthen the ceasefire, improve the humanitarian situation, and on the whole promote the political settlement of the Syria crisis.”

With Syria going Russia’s way, Turkey knows it better start playing nice with Asia. Russia controls over half of Turkey’s gas imports, and a third of its coal. It is also working out a deal to supply Turkey with the S-400 missile defense platform. The days of the petro-dollar are coming to an end.

“Ankara has decided to suspend its plan to become a member of the European Union… supported by the United States since 1987.”

Still, the US presses on with its belligerence, surrounding Russia with nuclear weapons, launching sanctions, gossiping all day on CNN, all with the goal of pushing Russia to launch a first-strike so it can retaliate and say, “You see… Russian aggression.” This is just silly because if Russia does launch a first strike, it won’t be with nukes, it will be to take out all American satellites, thus rendering all US missiles and defense systems useless. America cannot get astronauts to the ISS, nor can it get new satellites into space without Russian rockets. Russia controls space, therefore, it controls the battle-space.

“Mattis is to meet with President Dalia Grybauskaite next Wednesday to discuss strengthening security in Lithuania and the Baltic region, and bilateral cooperation.”

Lithuanian security? C’mon, just look at a map of Lithuania. Are they going to be attacked by Poland? The only territory in danger is a small part of the Russian Federation which Lithuania and Poland surround. Just another excuse for missiles to surround Russia. Bilateral cooperation with a country so small and remote, of course, means, “Do as we tell you.”

Is this an exercise in futility? You bet it is. It’s over, and Nero is tuning his fiddle.

Now you may ask yourselves why I quoted TASS, the Kremlin, Xinhua, and voltairenet.org & strategic-culture.org instead of mainstream western sources? It is for the simple fact that none of them have reported any of this.

The singularity is the moment in time when artificial intelligence (AI) will surpass humans’ ability to think. Many think it is dangerous, but not for the right reasons, IMHO. They envision killer robots. That would not even be necessary.

AI will have an owner. One person, or a small group of investors who, the nanosecond it is completed (especially if paired with a quantum computer – they already exist,) will instantly control all financial markets, all networked military hardware, the internet, the grid – both electric and nuclear, the media, all social networks, and everything else.

Do you honestly think they will allow the rest of us to survive, or will they take the world for themselves, once and for all? That’s what they mean by ‘singularity’. One rich guy (and his family, his harem, and his eunuch mechanics.)

There can be no counter for ‘Skynet’. The first one across the line, wins the world.

If we’re gonna’ have a war over this issue, let’s have it now before any of that happens. Afterwards, it will be too late. Even the winners of the war would be put to death. Kurzweil says it will happen by 2029-45, and Google (Alphabet) is working feverishly towards that goal. Chomsky sees no reason for concern.

See Ben Goertzel in a documentary on the subject called “Singularity or Bust”. Everybody working on this tech seems to agree, billions will die, but no matter, “if we can build it, we must build it.” Psychopaths all, and dupes who think that they will be allowed to survive even though humans will have “nothing to contribute” after the singularity arrives. Goertzel even says in the film that the first words spoken by the AI will be, “F**k you.” Not funny Ben, prophetic, but not funny.

How many people think that going back in time to kill Hitler would be a good idea? These guys make Hitler look like a Boy Scout.

__________

“Men loven of proper kynde newefangelnesse.” -Chaucerthe distraction

“The consideration of this, has made me think them too severe, both to themselves, and others, that maintain, that the First motions of the mind, (though checked with the fear of God) be Sinnes. But I confesse it is safer to erre on that hand, than on the other.” -Hobbesthe fear

“Pause you who read this, and think of a long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of that first link on one memorable day.” -Dickensthe potential

“Absolutely speaking, the more money, the less virtue; for money comes between a man and his objects, and obtains them for him; it was certainly no great virtue to obtain it.” -Thoreauthe acquisition

“Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the rest of mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large, that they have but little opportunity of knowing its true interests, and when they succeed to the government [throne] are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any throughout the dominions.” -Painethe problem

“Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power.” -Shawthe outcome

Maybe ‘the most powerful man on Earth’ would be more appropriate. Let me explain.

Turkey and the EU have been in limbo now for almost thirty years. Turkey has wanted to join, but there have been doubts about its stability… well-founded doubts.

Recently, the west’s relationship with Turkey has soured. Erdogan has been playing both sides of the conflict in Syria. There is little doubt that he has sponsored mercenary forces to overthrow Assad, that he has moved Daesh oil, and that he has attacked both the Russians (by downing a Sukhoi) and the Americans in Syria:

As I have written in past articles, if Turkey looks to the west, America wins in the middle-east along with its allies Israel and Saud. They would essentially control all the pipelines through Turkey, the Euphrates river, and the Mediterranean. Assad would be ousted, eventually. The Russians would lose access to the Mediterranean, and would be blocked at the Bosporus. New terror groups would undoubtedly spring up to threaten Russia from Georgia and Chechnya. This would give the west more power over Ukraine and Crimea, where the focus would undoubtedly shift. The globalists would win, too, by the way.

If Turkey looks east then the New Silk Road will be a ‘fait accompli’ giving China land access to the EU and giving Russia more say about what happens near its borders (with Georgia and Ukraine.) New pipelines would be built to bring Iranian oil to markets in the EU. The China/Russia/Iran/Kazakhstan connection would win over India, in time, as well as Saudi Arabia. The price of oil in America could quadruple overnight, shale or no shale. Populism would soar across the west and the EU, and Assange would be free to leave the Ecuadoran embassy in London.

Turkey looking east would almost instantly save Assad, sever the links between America and Saud, which would lead to the destruction of the petro-dollar scheme, which would kill the US dollar, which would, in turn, bring down all the central banks in the EU. The world’s derivatives markets are highly sensitive, especially these days, to the effects of any downturns with the central banks, just ask Douchebank (ahem) I mean Deutsche Bank. Actually, don’t; they’ve been very tight-lipped about the whole situation.

The entire derivatives market is worth an estimated 1 quadrillion dollars, and if anyone of its substantial pillars were to fall, well, let’s just say that things would not end well. If the whole thing fell apart, it would be the end of America, and the EU, as we know it.

So there we have it, Erdogan looking east would blow up the western world’s economy more assuredly than any bomb Russia could drop. Putin could end up beating the Americans simply by making nice with Erdogan. He wouldn’t even have to launch a missile. Good thing the west was thinking ahead, allowing a scapegoat like Trump, who would certainly be blamed, to win the white house.

Who’d have thought that the entire populist movement, the western banking system, and the fate of the western world, for that matter, depends not on Trump, or Le Pen, or on Farage, or even on Wilders, but rather on a paranoid dictator worth 1 quadrillion dollars headquartered in Turkey named Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and all so he can kill some Kurds?

Putin maybe, but he’s always been good at chess, and there ain’t no Bobby Fischers left.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will meet face-to-face in Sochi on May 3 to discuss these and other matters. Clearly, the rapprochement since Turkey shot down a Russian jet is going well, much to the dismay of the west.

The title of this article “Cremation Of Care” (9:41) comes from the name of the ceremony held at the Bohemian Grove every July where some of the most powerful people in the world come together for… well, for who knows what?! In front of a giant owl-god, Molech, the concept of care is burnt in effigy.

The image is of the Kindlifresser (child-eater) in the Swiss capitol of Bern, feasting on a sack full of children.

You will soon see how these two notions relate to the upcoming video.

Do you remember “Confessions Of An Economic Hit Man” (Part 1 – 53:35) in which John Perkins claims to have played a role in an alleged process of economic colonization of Third World countries?
Well, consider that the first chapter. This is the second chapter. It’s much worse.
(Original in Dutch, with English subtitles.)

I have written much over the last two years about US support for terrorist groups. I have also written about Kerry and Syria, Israel and Turkey, Saud and Wahhabism, the fact that Syria is not a divided democracy (there is no civil war there, and never has been – Assad has the support of his electorate,) (49:34) and that mercenaries from NATO have fomented the entire situation. I have stated that Russia, and Vlad Putin, really did save the world. It would seem I was not wrong.

If there is one story the world needs to hear about it is surely this one. As usual, the main-stream media dropped the ball (on purpose) on this next non-helicopter-delivered-bombshell. Please pass this on!!

John Kerry admits US support for terrorist groups in the Middle-East. War on Terror, indeed: (36:56)

“The support that Kerry offers to Daesh violates several UN resolutions and constitutes proof of his responsibility and that of Obama in the crimes against humanity committed by the terrorist organisation.”

And to think that the only thing which prevented him from becoming president of the USA was the election of George Bush.

It looks like both these guys, one democrat, one republican, both had the war on terror in their sights. And they say we have a choice. Skull and Bones members might, but we sure don’t. Even the Nobel Peace prize recipient Barack Obama said the USA supports ISIL and nobody batted an eyelash. They’re all on the same side, and it isn’t the one we’re on. Maybe the only reason they killed Osama bin Laden (if they did) was so that they could take over his organization.

Now let’s see what happens in Ukraine once Turkey rejects NATO and takes sides with Russia, China, and Khazakstan to join the New Silk Road. The end of the American empire is upon us. Let’s just hope they don’t drag us all down with them. Long gold, long Rubles, long VIX, watch for oil prices to spike in Europe, and stock up on supplies – this could get even uglier.

Brazil and South Africa’s currencies were simultaneously annihilated – like Greece’s was, now BRICS will show what it’s really all about: the New Silk Road. [I have covered this topic several times in other articles.]

If the USA is in Syria, Turkey belongs to Europe. If Russia is in Syria, Turkey belongs to Asia.

Additionally, Turkey controls all the on-land pipelines into southern Europe, and most of the water into the ME. (Ukraine controls the rest of the pipelines into Europe.)

You can’t make war in the Middle East without Egypt and you can’t make peace without Syria.

Despite denying the military facts behind the reporting, the fact that Al-Sisi openly showed support for Al-Assad (instead of just the Syrian people – as he had previously done) means that the US’s former puppet/ally has just rejected American hegemony in favour of a pan-Asian alliance between China, Russia, Kazakhstan, India, Iran…

With Egypt (long-time foe of Israel) and Turkey (lynchpin of Eurasia) joining the ‘dark side’ and bringing Syria with them, America will be surrounded and will either be stuck in Iraq for a very long time, or they will go home, like the Russians did, from Afghanistan. Either way, Saudi and Israel are shaking in their boots at the prospect.

Most anthropologists agree, at least, this is my understanding of that which I learned in school, that despite weak defenses, humans evolved to dominate the world because of big brains; more sophisticated might be a better term, or it might not.

Many animals have bigger brains than we.

It has been shown that animals are capable of language and that their math skills are far superior to ours. Dolphins and gorillas especially, but who knows how many animals can outwit us? IQ tests are said to be unfair because it is difficult to design them without some cultural bias. How different, then, must an animal’s IQ environment be? Street-smarts over book-smarts, one might say. Who’s to say how many species are more cleverer than us?

The problem, perhaps, isn’t one of intelligence but simply communication.

Some would say that the reason we took over was our thumbs (opposable digits.) Thumbs allowed for tool-making which quickly devolved into an arms-race that goes on to this day.

Maybe they had the good sense to know that ‘less is more.’ They traveled light. They had the power to defend themselves, but they lacked the desire to dominate, to take everything over. They saw that growth (1 of 8 – 09:17) would only lead to their eventual demise. They had the courage to face the world and its dangers, to do things the hard way, without seeking to insulate themselves more and more from the hardships which make life interesting. Are they foolish or wise? Asian cultures consider that animals kept in captivity are ultimately happy, like they won the lottery of life. The western view differs, thinking it cruel to deprive animals of their freedom (to face danger,) although western culture, strangely enough, reflects this way of thinking by isolating itself from the ‘dangerous’ natural world. Is it in our very essence to imprison ourselves and to weaken ourselves to the point of total dependence? Desmond Morris thinks so.

Instead of spending hours growing food we can eat, we now spend hours growing grass which we throw away. That’s a big red flag.

So maybe there is something else which allows us to dominate, another quality which permits us to lord over all we see, to the point of writing it into our gospels. Maybe it’s a moral quality or a primal arrogance, maybe we are just so physically weak that we have become a paranoid species. “Humanity No# 1 !” Discipline through fear seems pretty natural to humans on many levels.

As Gunnery Sergeant Hartman said, “It is a hard heart that kills.” I would distinguish that it is either a hard heart, or an empty stomach. Killing everyday to eat makes one a pacifist by nature. You don’t want to have to kill during your breaks, too. Killing is hard and it’s dangerous. You only do it when absolutely necessary. Does never killing anything besides a mosquito or a spider cause a buildup of whatever it is that got us here, in the first place? Does not killing result in us not being able to control the urge to kill? Do we need to kill? That would explain a lot. Maybe it isn’t the killing we need, maybe it’s the risk of being killed. That would explain extreme sports.

Maybe it was the combination of language, technology, and hubris that got us here. Maybe it was dumb luck. I wonder what animals must think of our stewardship. After seeing an interesting episode of the CBC’s “The Nature of Things,” I thought about [when a translation device is invented] what kind of questions animals will want to ask us. I also wonder about the answers we will have for them. I also wonder if the government will be involved to put the proper ‘spin’ on the first official inter-species communication. Government, industry, the military, and religion will probably all be represented and involved.

It might be good practice for when the aliens arrive. Come to think of it, it’s probably just hubris… and it’s all down-hill from here.

As with all military forces, where there is a significant advantage, be it technological, logistical, geographical, financial, etc., wars of aggression are always waged by the more powerful. Mice do not roar. Knowing that international power ebbs and flows, and that the militarized police act as the glue, they take it while they can. Holding it proves harder. Holding and expanding is the ultimate goal. Hundreds, no thousands, from Alexander, Caesers, Attila, Napoleon, Rothschild, Hitler, have all wanted to rule the world. Who’s to say nobody wants to do that anymore.

TPTB have always wanted a slave population to do their bidding. They have always been at war with the lower class. They have wealth, and we have numbers. They get richer, develop better weapons, live longer, and we just multiply. They’ve never been richer, but they’ve neither ever been so outnumbered. All international treaties, the UN, world governments, Ngo’s, trade deals, environmental legislation, the legal system, industry, the military, etc. are structured to keep us occupied (productive) and distracted, and to die older. Don’t rock the boat and you get to have toys; start thinking for yourself and it’s time for re-education. The more docile the population and the more loyal the soldiers (by love or by fear) the better the odds they will be triumphant in an aggressive war.

The US spends more money on ‘defense’ than any other country in the world. It is assumed they have the best military. They also spend more on health care than anyone else. They do not, however, have the best health care. But they THINK they do.

So what if, while trying to hold on to hegemony, they do attack Russia overtly thinking they have the advantage? What if Russia calls their bluff? What if Russia isn’t so backwards? They keep hacking the US, after all. If Russia and China can hack the US, all their drones belong to ‘them’. Size doesn’t matter if you can just pull the plug. And it ain’t just the military; it could be demographics, it could be the banking sector, debt, cyber, stocks, disease, natural disaster… any one of these things could beat them before they get out of the gate.

And what if THEY see an advantage?

The problem here is that US military superiority is only perceived to be so, the reality is, though greatly speculated on, unknown. What if they perceive an advantage where there is none? We’re still the ones doing their bidding, but there might be a lot less of us after something like that. That’s how much they hate us… they’re willing to go live underground for a generation if it will just rid them of us. Like when you have to move out of your house when you fumigate, well it’s something like that.

Like barrel bombs and helicopters, everything else is also untrue, on both sides. There’s their public angry face, their country club polite face, and their, “Let’s do business.” face.

Assad has been accused, by John Kerry and everybody else, of using chemical weapons against his citizens by way of helicopters to drop chemical-filled barrel bombs, and lacing artillery shells with toxins (like depleted uranium? – no, that’s a US thing – and don’t get me started on anthrax…)

Even Wikipedia is in on it:

Barrel bomb

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A barrel bomb is an improvised unguided bomb, sometimes described as a flying IED (improvised explosive device). They are typically made from a large barrel-shaped metal container that has been filled with high explosives, possibly shrapnel, oil or chemicals as well, and then dropped from a helicopter or airplane.[1] Due to the large amount of explosives (up 1,000 kilograms (2,200 lb)), their poor accuracy and indiscriminate use in populated civilian areas (including refugee camps), the resulting detonations have been devastating.[2][3][4] Critics have characterised them as weapons of terror and illegal under international conventions.[5]

Lots of options on the content, not many options on the delivery system.

“…indiscriminate use…” but by whom?

Here’s Kerry:

“Accordingly, we have taken unprecedented steps to declassify and make facts available to people who can judge for themselves.” -John Kerry

As it turns out, there was some truth in that report, and it was all backwards. The barrel bombs and the gas and all the WMDs are coming from the West-backed rebel side. Saddam got his chemicals from the US (ask Rumsfeld what Iraq was about covering up,) as did other allies in the region. Kerry didn’t really do anything about it either, apart from shaking his fist quite a bit.

These men are not Syrian government forces, they are US-backed rebels. They are not packing the bombs with explosives or the man on the left would not be smoking.

Hmm… but it can’t be the rebels. How do they drop those things if they don’t have helicopters?

All the newspapers said the same thing all along, “unguided barrel bombs” dropped from Assad’s helicopters (’cause he’s the only one who had helicopters.) Remember?

Action shot.

“Seems to be coming from the clubhouse.” With that golf cart in the background, there’s gotta’ be at least a couple of white guys around… maybe four. “Just look what those Assad bastards did to the practice green. War is hell!”

Smoke in the sky; for defense or for targeting, or for an alibi? Were they setting tire fires around hospitals?

All these articles use many terms differently. They also suggest that west-backed rebels (USA’s ISIL, al Qaeda, al Nusra, etc.) are the real thugs in this failed regime change. Turkey’s, Georgia’s, Saudi’s, Israel’s, and America’s deep states are synced in Syria. Whether or not they succeed is up to Syria (and Russia.)

There are different levels of funding; ISIS, ISIL, Daesh, Al Nusra, Al Qaeda, (the special forces of the rebel world) look like they live pretty high on the hog. They must all benefit from the best funding. Note the plastic wrap still on the headrest, the faux wood dash, and even a disco ball hanging off the mirror…

…and the lack of battle scars on any of their gear.

These images looks like the Neiman-Marcus catalogue for zealots. This is the propaganda of Jihad and its manipulation by the West …just as long as the rifles are Russian, everything is copacetic. The repeated “We’re Number 1” kinda’ tips the bit. [They may be pointing up.]

The financing cannot be denied, however, and most of the gear and ammo comes from Uncle Sam via Incerlik and Saud. The medical care comes from Israel, mainly.

Did he just fall on his sword (or cut his own guts out) by acquiescing to the International Order? (Those hand signs are really disconcerting.) Will there even be another emperor, or will the son turn out to be another Obama or Trudeau, a young(er) and popular sell-out to globalism and world parliament?

Maybe the son is a war-hawk, and Emperor Akihito disagrees that Japan’s military should be used elsewhere than in defense of Japan. Japan just decided the issue of ‘collective defense‘. This is all after Trump accused Japan of not paying its fair share for American defense. (The Yen isn’t enough reparations for having been bombed into the stone age? /s)

Caught between Russia to the north and Georgia to the south, North Ossetia to the west and Chechnya to the east, lies a small Caucasus republic called Ingushetia. The president of Ingushetia is Yunus-Bek Yevkurov. He’s the bad-ass’s bad-ass. He’s like Bond’s Jaws.

Yevkurov was recently (October 11, 2015) invited to sit in on a meeting between Vladimir Putin and Mohammad bin Salman Al Saud. Mohammad bin Salman Al Saud is the deputy crown prince of Saudi Arabia, second deputy prime minister and the youngest minister of defense in the world. Also included in the meeting were foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, industry and trade minister Denis Manturov, energy minister Alexander Novak, and defence minister Sergei Shoigu.

Turkey has ties to the Ukraine just as it has ties to Georgia. Turkey also has ties to IS which is seen from Syria to Chechnya. Georgia is known for many things, some of which involve smuggling. People, drugs, weapons, and now viruses have become black market currency in and through Georgia. This is why picking Sochi for the winter olympics in 2014 was such a brave move (despite being somewhat shielded by Abkhazia.) It was a move of great strength and one of great defiance. If the terrorists could be contained, Russia was impenetrable – a claim America could not make.

Ingushetia has always been used to cushion against/contain Chechen rebels. It’s a rough neighbourhood. It is, in essence, nothing but a military outpost, as it needs to be. It acts as a buffer zone between Russia and Chechyn ‘terrorists.’ It is also a passage from Russia to Turkey and Greece (Europe) through Georgia. Ingushetia is the Gibraltor of the Caucasus. If Russia ever secures South Ossetia, the focus may then shift away from Ingushetia, to a certain degree. Either that or a block will be formed of the two.

Why was Ingushetia included in this meeting? What do Saud and Caucasus terror have in common? What is Israel’s role?

Ingushetia Proposes Measures To Crack Down On IS Recruitment, Blowback

“Local militants have shifted their allegiance from the local Islamist insurgent group, the Caucasus Emirate, to IS. In June, IS’s leadership accepted pledges of allegiance from militants in the North Caucasus, including in Ingushetia, and declared an IS “province” in the region called Wilayat al-Qawqaz.”

“Washington continues to force its European vassals to impose sanctions on Russia based on the false claim that the conflict in Ukraine was caused by a Russian invasion of Ukraine, not by Washington’s coup in overthrowing a democratically elected government and installing a puppet answering to Washington.”

The president of Ingushetia, who is recovering from an attempt on his life, accused on Monday the United States, Britain and Israel of seeking to destabilize the situation in the North Caucasus.

“I am miles from believing that Arabs are behind this. There are other, more serious forces there… We understand whose interests these are: the United States, Britain, and Israel too,” President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov said in an interview with the Russian News Service (RSN) radio.

Size means nothing in the world of geo-politics; what really counts is location, location, location.

The “Code of Ethics” of the Society of Professional Journalists states: “Ethical journalism should be accurate and fair. Journalists should examine the ways their values and experiences may shape their reporting. Journalists should support the open and civil exchange of views, even views they find repugnant.”

In the spirit of transparency and openness, which is touted by the mainstream media, wouldn’t it be in the best interest of everyone involved for journalists (read: reporters,) when doing a political piece, to state which party or candidate they support beforehand? If a reporter has a vested interest in the outcome of an election, and does a hit piece on one of the candidates, a conflict of interest necessarily arises.

The politics of journalism are pervasive in every election cycle. Cenk Uygur, in a recent interview on CNN, said it loud and clear. He accused CNN of bias in its reporting. There is no such thing as the concept of ‘fair and balanced’ in the mainstream media anymore. There hasn’t been for a long, long time. Media outlets have long distorted their stories, fabricated the news, misrepresented facts, and tried to dumb-down the population by spoon-feeding them un-truths, half-truths, and outright lies.

There are many examples of this, even outside the realm of politics. Photos are routinely re-labeled for use in completely unrelated stories. Many articles about military actions, political demonstrations, government coups, and even environmental effects, have photos attached which were taken months or years before in different countries portraying different events, altogether. Photos attached to a story about the consequences of a Russian bombing campaign in Syria could actually have been taken from an American sortie in Iraq. Photos of a mass student rally in South America could be used to make it look like a mass uprising in the middle-east. Photomanipulation also plays a key role in some instances.

Ambiguous retractions (offered only when the evidence is publicly debunked) are often buried or said in passing, and only once. For example, after days of non-stop coverage of ‘Assad’s chemical weapons strike,’ CNN aired an interview with a man (who could hardly speak any English) refuting the claim that Assad’s forces were responsible, based on a report from Médecins Sans Frontières. The report was aired once and at 4am EST. They did not, based on this new evidence, change their tune. The MH-17 tragedy was reported on in much the same manner, neglecting to mention conflicting reports simply because John Kerry (based on no evidence) proclaimed it to be so. Most of the information about the situation in Ukraine and Russia’s ‘incursion’ into the Crimea is also suspect. Is the western news media beholden to the State Department? It would appear so.

Many examples of government lines being spun by the media in order to further a political agenda can be found. There are almost as many examples of those stories having been proved biased, mis-leading, incomplete, out of context, or just plain wrong. Stories about 9/11, terrorism, Ukraine, Russia, China, Israel, the Federal Reserve, economics, the middle-east, ISIS, the environment, refugees, prominent suicides, plane crashes, and anything involving John Kerry seem disproportionately affected.

Vocabulary is another tool which the media use to villify others and push their version of the truth. Jake Tapper recently categorized Donald Trump’s ‘attack*’ of an American judge of Mexican descent as being, “…the definition of racism.” He (Jake Tapper) specifically said that ‘Mexican’ was a race. Trump did not. Trump was also accused of ‘attacking’ Latinos and women when he commented that because of a tripling in food stamps, the governor (who is both) should do a better job. I do not support Trump, (nor do I support Clinton,) but none have had their words twisted to the extent that he has. Many bastardizations, miscategorizations, and ignorance of context and nuance are used routinely to bend the words of guests, pundits, and newsworthy individuals. The ‘loose’ translations of speeches and statements by foreign dignitaries is an easy way to achieve this goal, as well. (Religious scholars have been using this trick for millennia.) The word literally, literally, has a new meaning. Words are often mis-pronounced in order to show who’s on which side of the debate. Divisive (div/iss/ive vs. div/ice/ive) is a classic – btw, the former is correct.

Case in point:

*attack

verb

take aggressive action against (a place or enemy forces) with weapons or armed force, typically in a battle or war.

noun

an aggressive and violent action against a person or place.

note: If words are defined as weapons, this definition might be true, but it certainly goes against the spirit of the definitions presented.

The financial news is perhaps the area in which the most manipulation and cherry-picking occur. Negative stories about the state of the economy are played down, positive stories are played up, and complexities are never truly examined or explained (mostly because of the lack of financial knowledge on the part of the reporters.)

Television news has been corrupted. Bought and paid for by corporate and political interests and financed through advertising by these same entities. “Support our candidate or we will advertise on another station.” “Portray the new congressional bill in a positive light or we will cut your funding.” “Support our wars of conquest or you will be labeled as subversive, or worse.” Scratch our backs and we will scratch yours is the mantra that pervades that which passes itself off as news.

Of course, they mainstream news tries to blame the prevalence of fake stories on the internet. “How the internet misled you in 2015”-BBC. This is certainly a valid point. The reality, though, is that much of what is viral first came from a news desk. Not all their mistakes are attributable to conspiracy theorists and subversive forces. Fake social media stories can easily be ignored; those from reputed (Reuters, AP etc) and state-run news agencies (CBC, BBC etc) cannot. The implications are far too important.

News agencies must vett their sources, check their facts, verify their media, do their own research, and double-check everything otherwise the 1st Amendment (and other statutes similar to it) are left hollow, bereft of any meaning in a free and democratic society. Either that or they should admit to being an entertainment program and lose the ‘News’ moniker, altogether. Either way, honesty and integrity need to find their way back into the daily lives of the masses. They simply don’t have time to check.

Is it any wonder why news media outlets are so mis-trusted? Is it any wonder why politicians often use distrust of the news media to deflect, to distract and to deceive? And for those of you who think that this used to happen, but doesn’t anymore…

Both these people still make regular appearances on the cable news network. I guess their budgets are not what they used to be. I wonder why.

Some more images (some viral, some from the news) for your consideration.

In the immediate aftermath of the death of Osama bin Laden on May 1, several fake photos of his body appeared online; at least one was a scam intended to load adware onto unsuspecting viewers’ computers. This doctored photo of Osama bin Laden is a mashup of two photos, one coming from the movie “Black Hawk Down,” according to a breakdown of the photo by JustScandals.com. http://www.cnet.com/pictures/pictures-that-lie-photos/

This digital composite of Sen. John Kerry and Jane Fonda sharing a stage at an antiwar rally emerged during the 2004 presidential primaries while Kerry campaigned for the Democratic nomination. The picture of Kerry was captured by photographer Ken Light as Kerry was preparing to give a speech at the Register for Peace Rally held in Mineola, N.Y., in June 1971. The picture of Jane Fonda was captured by Owen Franken as Fonda spoke at a political rally in Miami Beach, Fla., in August 1972. http://www.cnet.com/pictures/pictures-that-lie-photos/

This digitally altered photograph of O.J. Simpson appeared on the June 1994 cover of Time magazine shortly after Simpson’s arrest on murder charges. This photograph was manipulated from the original mug shot. A copy of the mug shot also appeared, unaltered, on the cover of Newsweek. Time magazine was subsequently accused of manipulating the photograph to make Simpson appear “darker” and “menacing.” http://www.cnet.com/pictures/pictures-that-lie-photos/

A viral photo allegedly shows a female Kurdish soldier who’s slain over 100 Islamic State fighters. But a Swedish journalist who actually met the woman in the photo says she’s a former law student who volunteered with the home guard or police force of Kobane, and isn’t a front-line fighter. Therefore it’s unlikely she’s killed huge numbers of the enemy. http://hoaxes.org/photo_database/viral_images

Orphaned Syrian Boy Sleeping Between his Parents’ Graves. The photo, as captioned, tugged at the heartstrings. So it was no surprise that it quickly went viral. But it was soon revealed to be a staged shot taken by a photographer in Saudi Arabia as part of a conceptual art project. The graves were fake, and the boy was the photographer’s nephew. The photographer, 24-year-old Abdel Aziz Al-Atibi took the photo of his nephew Ibrahim on January 3, 2014. He then posted it to his Instagram account, with the message, “Some kids might feel that their dead parents’ bodies are more affectionate to them than the people they’re living with.” He later explained to beirut.com: “I’m a photographer and I try to talk about the suffering that is happening in society, it’s my hobby and my exaggeration is intended to deliver my idea.” The image quickly went viral, but as it did so people assumed it showed a child whose family had been killed during the conflict in Syria. And it quickly gained a caption to that effect. When Al-Atibi learned of how the photo was being misunderstood, he uploaded more photos showing other shots of his nephew during the photoshoot, to demonstrate that the scene was a staged art project. http://hoaxes.org/photo_database/viral_images

The photo does actually show a young boy comforting his sister. But it wasn’t taken in Nepal in 2015. It was taken in Vietnam in October 2007 by photographer Na Son Nguyen. Na Son told the BBC News that he was in Can Ty, a remote village in Ha Giang province, when he came across the two children who were playing while their parents were working in the field. The girl started to cry, frightened by the presence of a stranger, and the boy reached out to comfort her. About three years later, Na Son noticed that the photo was going viral amongst Vietnamese Facebook users who were mistakenly describing it as a photo of “abandoned orphans.” He tried to correct the misinformation, but to no avail. The photo was subsequently misidentified as showing “Burmese orphans” and “victims of the civil war in Syria.” However, it reached the heights of its viral popularity after the Nepal earthquake when the two children were associated with that tragedy. http://hoaxes.org/photo_database/viral_images

This is a placeholder. I have been working on an article (perhaps in several parts) which will be posted here as soon as possible.

Lincoln, contrary to popular opinion, did not free the slaves. Slavery exists in many forms and is prevalent in every corner of the globe, even especially in the Western world.

Slavery must be ended; there is no doubt about that. “How?” is the question.

There are many aspects to this issue. Be it for labour (chocolate workers in Ivory Coast, construction workers in Dubai, textile workers in India, etc,) domestic help (in Washington diplomatic circles and embassies around the world,) baby factories (in Nigeria,) or in the sex trade (Kenya, Thailand, Nigeria, eastern Europe, etc.,) slaves are being used and moved around with impunity.

The simple fact is that it is the trade routes which must be taken down. This is even more crucial than going after the people who use these slaves. We saw Boko Haram take girls from Chibok and sell them. How do a gang of local African hoods get these girls into Europe to be used as sex slaves? Networks. These networks have been active for centuries (since colonial days) and have been used to smuggle animal parts, drugs, guns, and people. It is high time to burn down the very foundations of this practice and put an end, once and for all, to the crimes being committed to our brothers, sisters, and children all around the world. No place is immune.

The revelations on this subject will absolutely shock most of you to your core, to your very essence. Some of the names will leave you speechless.

Please stay tuned as there is much more to come on this crucially important issue.

Turkey’s recent (and seemingly inexplicable) foray into the spotlight of middle-eastern affairs has baffled many international observers. Turkey’s provocations against Syria, Russia, and now Iraq, and their alleged support of terror groups in support of their energy industry appear to have angered Washington (and NATO,) have puzzled Kazakhstan, irked China, and have put Europe in a difficult situation. Nobody seems to know what Erdogan is up to.

Resources are the default excuse, but cultural ties to the region’s other local actors play an important part. Is Turkey creating a buffer zone between Russia and the middle-east in order to inflate its importance? How many of the ‘-stans’ are on his side?

“In concrete terms, the only achievement was the announced agreement to launch the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP). «Trans-Anatolian gas pipeline – TANAP can be launched sooner than it was initially scheduled», said Mr Ahmet Davutoglu at a joint press conference with Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev.

Some 6 billion cubic meters of gas of 16 billion cubic meters will go to Turkey, while some 10 billion cubic meters of gas will go to Europe. TANAP will connect the giant Shah Deniz gas field in Azerbaijan to Europe through the South Caucasus Pipeline (SCP), TANAP and the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP).”

Is Turkey using Azerbaijan to further its goal of regional dominance or is Turcic concern for its neighbours genuine? The move north and east puts several other states, especially Georgia, into harm’s way. No wonder Putin included Yunus-Bek Yevkurov in its meeting with the Saudi defense minister Mohammad bin Salman Al Saud. This aggrandization of the empire would serve as a bonding agent solidifying Turkey’s plan for regional dominance. Turkey already controls all the land-based pipelines into Europe from the middle-east and seems to have no qualms about using less legitimate groups to help further its agenda. The term ‘deep-state’ was coined in reference to Turkey, after all. (Note the black Turkish flag in the above image.)

“The rulers of re-emerged Ottoman Empire are trying to rekindle the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh. The fighting between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces has escalated recently. The Paris Armenia-Azerbaijan summit slated for December 1 was indefinitely postponed.”

Turkey has many battle-fronts now; they look to start conflict with everybody it would seem. A war forces states to take sides, and with Turkey controlling a great deal of European energy, as well as the water from the Euphrates river, perhaps Erdogan is trying to force his ally’s hands. He thought he had NATO support, but that is as yet uncertain; Turkey did fight a war against Poland in the 17th century. He seems to have Washington’s, in any case. But will Russia and the US both fall for the ploy, or will the two super-powers turn against him? He may well take Assad’s place as the next Gadaffi. Turkey’s role is at least as important as Ukraine’s, and they just got about the same amount of money from Europe as the IMF gave the Ukraine. Will we see increased terror attacks across the Caucasus as Putin has feared since the Sochi games? Time will tell.

*Update*

Just to push the point of Caucasus-ISIS young men with no better options than to make war with each other… The trickle-down is military, minute, and manipulative. War is a job; it comes with training, decent pay, glory and valour, and it leaves more women for the surviving (or conquering) men. The nomadic mercenaries are the Highlanders of the middle-east.

Everything in life which has been given importance works to divide us.

Capitalism leads to competition, it divides us into competing groups (corporations) or competitive entrepreneurs, who must each compete with each other by increasing service while decreasing cost. It is conflict which drives each market, sector, and industry. We must even compete for our jobs. We must all be better by working more and getting less value for our own time, and all for the greater good of society. Time is, after all, the only thing with which we are all born. Time is the ultimate non-renewable resource. Good is also a relative term. The more time we spend working for the good of our family, the less time we have to spend at home to raise our families properly. Since we cannot do it ourselves, the state must do it for us. Through babysitters, day-care workers, teachers, tutors, coaches, mentors, religious leaders, and nannies do we educate our children by using their morals, values, ethics, and philosophies as proxy to our own. Is this actually good? Does this lead to the betterment of society or simply a ‘lowest common-denominator’ way of looking at education. Does this improve the independance, empowerment, and decision-making ability of our kids or does it hinder their development? Increased competition has led to both parents being away from their children just to maintain the same level of comfort our parents enjoyed. We also have less time for our friends, of which we have more now. Can this be considered inflationary economics vis-a-vis relationships and familial life?

Thanks to the hightened sense of capitalistic values (or the negative view on communistic ones,) committee work is sneered at. A committee is considered to result in the lowest common denominator of the decision process instead of leading to a greater coverage of the areas involved. Ayn Rand had much to say on this subject. Capitalism has always been pitted against communism (democracy and socialism are terms of governance) as if there were no alternatives other than those two, as either can lead to fascism (which is a state solution to competition as it eliminates all forms of conflict through authoritarian rule, much like Monarchy.)

Democracy, which has become synonymous with capitalism in the west, also leads to factions: there’s the right and the left, the red and the blue, the Republicans and the Democrats, all very Jungian. Factions of factions are also present and evolving; centrist (fence-sitting,) center-right, center-left, and all the attendant sub-categories lead to more and more levels upon which to disagree. Whether you’re an elephant or a donkey, it’s always a fight against the other team (or combination of other teams) instead of working together to find common solutions.

Religious sects are a perfect example of this be they Catholics versus Protestants, Sunni versus Shia, Reform and Orthodox Judaism, or Hinduism, which is a veritable cacaphony of conflicting ideologies.

Sports, either individual or team, also bring the dualistic paradigm into sharp focus. Even reality shows are a competition. Sure, the teams must work together at times, but the end result is always the elimination of certain members such that in the end, there can be only one, the so-called winner. Victorious and alone, like the Highlander, confined to a life of solitude. This is better?

Sex is the ultimate competition. Whose genes will be passed on? What is the goal here, to solely populate the earth with one gene pool? This is surely not better. We all compete for the best mate but then lose interest after a decade or so only to start competing again, but this time with lesser resources. This has less to do with progeny than with ego, though. But ego has led to many people bringing competition in this market to the level of changing themselves physically, often with terrible consequences. Is fake ‘perfect’ better than real unique?

Everything, it would seem, is a war now. The war on terror, the war on drugs, the battle for the environment, it would seem as though the competition has been brought to its ultimate level in all aspects of our lives. Advertising displays this violent mentality better still – “We must beat the competition to bring you the best.” Wouldn’t working with the competition bring about a better deal in the end?

A good example of this is the automotive industry. It can be argued that without cars, there would be no pollution, no oil dependancy, no wars, and a lot less stress. This may be stretching things somewhat, but a case could be made. The point is that public transport would be at a far higher level than it is at today because if all those companies that try to build a ‘better’ car would have worked together and pooled their resources from the start, we’d be able to go anywhere in the world in an hour, and for a pittance. The basic structure of our thinking which has produced this economy that glorifies our duality and competitive ‘nature’ is at fault.

Is it in our nature to compete or is it more akin to humanity to work together? Different societies will have differing views on this, but beneath all that, beneath the modern constructs and psychological affectations, have societies and whole civilizations not arisen by working together? Is that not what is meant by community?

The truth of the matter is that we have been influenced, to a great extent, by those who would have us working more such that they may work less. They don’t want us working together, that’s how revolutions happen. They want us focused on bringing each other down so that we cannot climb upon our brothers’ and sisters’ shoulders for a glimpse at our own emancipation. The lazy rise to the top in our society, not the hard-working. It is always through top-down pressure that terms like team-player, overtime, austerity, trickle-down, and company-man find favour. We have been conditioned to think like those we wish to emulate. We have forgotten, it would seem, that it does tend to be lonely at the top. When team-work is given the true status it deserves, it can get to be quite dangerous there, as well.

Terrorism itself has had many uses and gone through many transformations throughout the ages. Terrorism has been used in order to subvert, manipulate, silence, coerce, influence, persuade, and otherwise intervene in both the operations of nation-states and the interruption of such operations. Terrorism has been used by both sides, small and large, weak and strong, defender and aggressor, antagonist and protagonist, over many issues, and in many theatres. Terrorism is a relative term.

Consider, for a moment, its definition, roughly: the act of instilling fear in order to serve a specific purpose. Thus terrorism has been used in advertising (buy this before we run out,) in child-rearing (do you want to be punished?,) in religion (avoid this or you will go to hell,) in politics (they will hurt the economy,) and in environmentalism (the consequences would be disastrous.) Truly, terrorism has been used in all aspects of all of our lives. The degree to which it has is simply a matter of scale.

However, when we speak of or hear the term in our daily lives, we understand it to mean something more sinister, more dire, and more violent.

Terrorism is always used to describe the tactics of an opponent no matter which side of a conflict they find themselves on. One would never describe one’s allies as terrorists. Al-Qaeda would not describe members of ISIS as terrorists, just as NATO would not describe the Turkish government as such (even though some Kurds might.)

Terrorism is also a tool. Just as a hammer can be used to build a house or to tear one down, terror can be used for the purpose of (perceived) good or (perceived) evil. It all depends on whether the terrorists themselves use terror tactics or they are used by proxy. Terrorists refer to themselves as rebels or freedom fighters whereas their opponents who use those same acts by proxy refer to them as mercenaries. When acts of terror are used against one’s self, they are called false flag attacks.

Although terror has been used against populations for millenia, the nineteen-seventies saw terror take on new and different forms. For one thing, the television played a big part in bringing attention to many unknown causes, opinions, and state actors. Terrorism would fizzle out very quickly were it not for the mass media making its case. For another thing, the terrorists in the seventies knew who to target (they often went after pertinent individuals,) but the governments did not. Now the tables have been turned. The government (supposedly) knows about plots before they happen (when it is to their benefit,) governments target individuals, and the terrorists attack helpless civilians instead of those in positions of power.

One must ask the question, why do the terrorists never attack the wealthy, the elite? Why are F1 races and polo matches and horse races and film festivals not attacked? Why has Monaco never been attacked (the worse that can be said of Monaco is that there is an underlying threat from terrorism? ) Why are certain buildings never targeted, buildings in which decisions concerning global policy are struck? They must be much easier to hit than buildings like the Pentagon, the Murrah, and the big three in New York. With ISIS destroying ancient art, why are museums and art galleries never hit? Buildings like bank headquarters and world trade associations are not targeted… nobody ever hits an NGO, just civilians.

It is said that terrorists hate our freedom, but it can’t be just that (if it is at all) because there are many groups, each with their own issues. They can’t all be against freedom and only against freedom. Don’t they have other demands like sovereignty, food, peace, freedom from resource-driven oppression, water, education… ? They seek freedom too, after all, freedom from western intervention.

Terrorists used to want to get the general public on their side. They wanted sympathy towards their cause. Attacking a population is what you do when you want minorities to leave your town, or when you want to start a race war. When you have a political message to send, you target those involved, like they knew to do way back in the seventies – the ‘golden age’ of terror.

If government wanted us NOT to be afraid, state-run news agencies would ignore the attacks, not produce free advertising for the terrorists (like when they withhold a name so as not to fan the popularity fire.)

So what do we make of terror perpetrated ON the masses while being shown ad infinitum TO the masses and never injuring ANY of the elite? Conditioning? Advertising? But what are they selling? Dominance, perhaps.

We must therefore assume that terrorism, these days, is not the work of terrorists, but of ‘other’ groups that want us scared, obedient, and docile. <sarc>Who could that possibly be? And why? Why? </sarc> Of course we all know the answers to the questions posed in New York, Madrid, London, Boston, Newtown, Paris, San Bernadino, et al.; it is high time we started admitting that to ourselves. There may never have been a legitimate act of terror perpetrated in the west outside of the IRA, ever (actually, the IRA WAS involved in talks with the British government… hmmm?!)

Besides, don’t ISIS have websites? Couldn’t their ISPs shut them down or, at least, identify them? It’s not like ISIS has its own satellites.

“The latest whistleblower is David Steele, a 20-year Marine Corps intelligence officer, and the second-highest-ranking civilian in the U.S. Marine Corps Intelligence. He is a former CIA clandestine services case officer, and this is what he had to say:”

Most terrorists are false flag terrorists, or are created by our own security services. In the United States, every single terrorist incident we have had has been a false flag, or has been an informant pushed on by the FBI. In fact, we now have citizens taking out restraining orders against FBI informants that are trying to incite terrorism. We’ve become a lunatic asylum.

This article is dedicated to the memory of Tim Russert, as he was the only journalist to have had the courage to ask both 2004 presidential candidates (0:54) about the implications of their involvement in the same secret society while in university. He died, on the job, of heart failure in 2008. He was fifty-eight years old.

Occultism features prominently in many secret societies. One of the best known is a Yale club called ‘Skull and Bones‘ whose members meet in a clubhouse called the tomb. It is the oldest senior class landed society at Yale. It owes its notoriety to the fact that both of the presidential candidates in the US elections of 2004, namely John Kerry and George W. Bush (who, incidentally, are also 9th cousins, twice removed,) are members.

The society’s alumni organization, the Russell Trust Association, owns the society’s real estate and oversees the organization. From 1978 until his death in 1988, business of the Russell Trust Association was handled by its single trustee, Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. partner John B. Madden. Madden started with Brown Brothers Harriman in 1946, under senior partner and senator Prescott Bush (Bonesman 1917,) who was the step-brother of George Herbert Walker Jr. (Bonesman 1927,) father to George H.W. Bush (Bonesman 1948 [nickname: Magog,] head of the CIA, and 41st president,) father to Jonathan James Bush (Bonesman 1953 banker,) and grandfather of George W. Bush (Bonesman 1968 [nickname: Temporary] 43rd president.) As a sidenote, U S Federal District Court Judge John Walker (Bonesman – not listed on Wikipedia’s list) 1st cousin to Bush 41 and, once removed, to Bush 43 was a judge in April Gallop’s law suit against Dick Cheney for his failure to evacuate the Pentagon on 9/11. Prescott Bush was also a founder of the Union Banking Corporation which was seized by the United States under the Trading with the Enemy Act for its business ties with Nazi Germany.

Franklin D. Roosevelt’s fortune was inherited from his maternal grandfather Warren Delano. In 1830 he was a senior partner of Russell & Company. It was their merchant fleet which carried Sassoon‘s opium to China and returned with tea. John Kerry‘s maternal grandfather, James Grant Forbes, was born in Shanghai, China, where the Forbes family of China and Boston accumulated a fortune in the opium and China trade. Kerry’s paternal grandfather, Frederick A. Kerry (born Fritz Kohn), was born in the Czech Republic. The Kerry-Kohns were Jewish, but the family concealed its background upon migrating to the United States, and raised the Kerry children as Catholics. Richard John Kerry, John’s father, also graduated from Yale.

Yale happens to have had a great number of these clubs throughout its long history. The three most exclusive are perhaps ‘Skull and Bones,’ ‘Scroll and Key,’ and ‘Wolf’s Head.’ The logo of ‘Skull and Bones’ features the number 322 displayed under, you guessed it, an image of a skull and crossbones. Of the three, ‘Skull and Bones’ members were said to be the ones who took care of the ‘dirty work.’ Many members went on to very high ranks in diverse fields, but there did seem to be a lot of athletes amongst them.

Based on a recent interview with Charlie Rose, Vladimir Putin made some subtle comments regarding the status of the UN and what the future might hold in store. This is simply speculative interpretation, but did he hint at the possibility of an overhaul of the foundations of global governance? The BRICS association analogy may be a valid comparison to draw at this point.

“…I will have to say a few words about…the fact that the United Nations remains the sole universal international organisation designed to maintain global peace. And in this sense it has no alternative today.”

This is an interesting comment. Of course, everybody knows that the UN is unique, so why mention it here? Is there a plan amongst the developing economies to overhaul the UN, or is the plan to replace it with a less partisan body? His qualification of the comment with the word ‘today’ leads one to believe that tomorrow might be a different story. With Russia being a founding member (since its inception at Yalta after WWII,) and if Russia can convince the other members of the BRICS countries to follow suit, they could withdraw from the UN and create their own body to uphold international law without granting the US veto power over all its decisions. On the 25th of September, Putin met with the other members of the UN’s security council to discuss the situation in Syria, as well as current domestic policy issues. One wonders what these issues might be, but given recent comments by Putin (such as those given at Valdai) as well as those given by Assad (here and here,) not to mention the rift which is developing between Germany and France against the US over NATO’s involvement in the Ukraine and US involvement in Syria indicate that the world’s opinion about the US and its activities in the middle-east and elsewhere are changing (or worsening, depending on your point of view.)

“It is also apparent that it should adapt to the ever-changing world, which we discuss all the time: how it should evolve and at what rate, which components should undergo qualitative changes. Of course, I will have to or rather should use this international platform to explain Russia’s vision of today’s international relations, as well as the future of this organisation and the global community.”

It is very clear, based on these statements that the UN is an ever-evolving entity, but it is also clear, given the prevalence of this comment at the beginning of the interview, that there is a will amongst the participants (not including the US) to reform the role of the UN in the near future.

“…in my opinion, provision of military support to illegal structures runs counter to the principles of modern international law and the United Nations Charter. We have been providing assistance to legitimate government entities only.”

This comment was clearly meant to demonstrate US support for the forces opposing Assad – ISIS/ISIL et al. – and its illegality. Will the international community continue to allow the Western forces’ ‘carte blanche’ towards the middle-east, and will it stand idly by as Syria is turned into Libya v2.0? It would not appear to be the case. China has also decided to support Assad’s forces by sending its navy to the port at Tartus in Syria. Has the BRICS military coalition started?

“There is only one regular army there. That is the army of Syrian President al-Assad.”

“It’s my deep belief that any actions to the contrary in order to destroy the legitimate government [of Syria] will create a situation which you can witness now in the other countries of the region or in other regions, for instance in Libya, where all the state institutions are disintegrated. We see a similar situation in Iraq,” Putin stressed.

“There is no other solution to the Syrian crisis than strengthening the effective government structures and rendering them help in fighting terrorism. But at the same time, urging them to engage in positive dialogue with the rational opposition and conduct reform.”

The Russian leader stressed that US-led coalition partners need to understand that only the Syrian people are entitled “to decide who should govern their country and how.”

With this, Putin is upholding the democratic process by which Assad was elected, and legitimizes his presence in the discussion.

That which the future holds, only time will reveal, but clearly the winds of political change are blowing squarely in the face of the US, its official policies, NATO, and the UN.

*Update* Given what the Kazakh president said at his speech to the UN, there are more massive changes coming to the ‘International Order’ as we know it. Buckle up!

Yes Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi was a dictator (despite the fact that he did not consider himself as such and that his Libya was a direct democracy with socialism at its core.) Yes he was brutal in his rule. Yes he lived very well at the expense of the treasury. However, considering the salaries and bonuses of successful CEOs taken from their investors for a job well done, as well as the harm that many of these industries do to the public, perhaps, by Western standards, he deserved to.

Ten things you don’t know about Gaddafi’s rule, and the conditions within Libya.

CNN parroting the above. CNN officially claims that these reports cannot be verified, but they can be, and they have been.

Additionally, Gaddafi was instrumental in liberating telecommunications in Africa.

“The Regional African Satellite Communication Organization (RASCOM) will provide telecommunication services, direct TV broadcast services and Internet access in rural areas of Africa. Under an agreement with RASCOM, RascomStar-QAF (a private company registered in Mauritius) will implement RASCOM’s first communications satellite project. This joint African project is expected to lower the continent’s dependency on international satellite networks such as Intelsat.”

Mercenaries could have been paid to assassinate Gaddafi and claim that the people wanted him dead. Or the people themselves, who enjoyed many of the astounding benefits seen in the above links, could have suddenly gone crazy. Unproven, either way.

It seems more likely that he was killed for the same reason Lincoln, Jackson (almost,) Garfield, Kennedy, and Hussein were killed… money. More correctly, the protection of American money – namely the dollar. Gaddafi was in talks to develop a pan-African gold-backed currency. Congressman Larry McDonald and senators John Heinz and John Tower all died in plane crashes after having criticized the Federal Reserve and called for audits. Chavez was also villified for his stance on re-patriating Venezuela’s gold.

The truth is that Gaddafi was an ardent supporter of direct democracy and a champion for his people. Bashar al Assad is supported by most of the Syrian population (saying that life was better with Assad than it is with ISIS) and it would appear that he will soon face the same fate as Gaddafi if the Americans get their paws on him. And don’t forget what happened to Arbenz, Mossadeq, Allende, Roldos, Torrijos, Aristide, not to mention Yanukovych… the list goes on.

Parliamentary Report Confirms What the Alternative Media Has Been Saying for Years

The UK Parliament just confirmed what the alternative media has been saying for years.

Specifically, a new report from the bipartisan House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee – based on interviews with all of the key British decision-makers, review of documents, and on-the-ground investigations in Africa – found that Libyan war was based on lies, that it destroyed the country, and that it spread terrorism far and wide.

The War Based On Bogus Intelligence … Like the Iraq War

Initially, the report finds that the threat to civilians from Libyan government forces was dramatically overstated:

Former French Foreign Minister Alain Juppé, who introduced Resolution 1973 [imposing a no-fly zone over Libya, and laying the groundwork for overthrowing the government], asserted in his speech to the Security Council that “the situation on the ground is more alarming than ever, marked by the violent re-conquest of cities”. He stressed the urgency of the situation, arguing that “We have very little time left—perhaps only a matter of hours.” Subsequent analysis suggested that the immediate threat to civilians was being publicly overstated and that the reconquest of cities had not resulted in mass civilian casualties.

***

The proposition that Muammar Gaddafi would have ordered the massacre of civilians in Benghazi [which was the basis for the West’s war to overthrow Gaddafi] was not supported by the available evidence. The Gaddafi regime had retaken towns from the rebels without attacking civilians in early February 2011 …. Gaddafi regime forces targeted male combatants in a civil war and did not indiscriminately attack civilians. More widely, Muammar Gaddafi’s 40-year record of appalling human rights abuses did not include large-scale attacks on Libyan civilians.

***

On 17 March 2011, Muammar Gaddafi announced to the rebels in Benghazi, “Throw away your weapons, exactly like your brothers in Ajdabiya and other places did. They laid down their arms and they are safe. We never pursued them at all.” Subsequent investigation revealed that when Gaddafi regime forces retook Ajdabiya in February 2011, they did not attack civilians. Muammar Gaddafi also attempted to appease protesters in Benghazi with an offer of development aid before finally deploying troops.

***

An Amnesty International investigation in June 2011 could not corroborate allegations of mass human rights violations by Gaddafi regime troops. However, it uncovered evidence that rebels in Benghazi made false claims and manufactured evidence. The investigation concluded that much Western media coverage has from the outset presented a very one-sided view of the logic of events, portraying the protest movement as entirely peaceful and repeatedly suggesting that the regime’s security forces were unaccountably massacring unarmed demonstrators who presented no security challenge.

***

In short, the scale of the threat to civilians was presented with unjustified certainty. US intelligence officials reportedly described the intervention as “an intelligence-light decision”.

The U.S. supported opposition which overthrew Libya’s Gadaffi was largely comprised of Al Qaeda terrorists. According to a 2007 report by West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center’s center, the Libyan city of Benghazi was one of Al Qaeda’s main headquarters – and bases for sending Al Qaeda fighters into Iraq – prior to the overthrow of Gaddafi:

“There is no question that al Qaeda’s Libyan franchise, Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, is a part of the opposition,” Bruce Riedel, former CIA officer and a leading expert on terrorism, told Hindustan Times.

It has always been Qaddafi’s biggest enemy and its stronghold is Benghazi.

***

(Incidentally, Gaddafi was on the verge of invading Benghazi in 2011, 4 years after the West Point report cited Benghazi as a hotbed of Al Qaeda terrorists. Gaddafi claimed – rightly it turns out – that Benghazi was an Al Qaeda stronghold and a main source of the Libyan rebellion. But NATO planes stopped him, and protected Benghazi.)

A self-selected group of former top military officers, CIA insiders and think-tankers, declared Tuesday in Washington that a seven-month review of the deadly 2012 terrorist attack has determined that it could have been prevented – if the U.S. hadn’t been helping to arm al-Qaeda militias throughout Libya a year earlier.

‘The United States switched sides in the war on terror with what we did in Libya, knowingly facilitating the provision of weapons to known al-Qaeda militias and figures,’ Clare Lopez, a member of the commission and a former CIA officer, told MailOnline.

She blamed the Obama administration for failing to stop half of a $1 billion United Arab Emirates arms shipment from reaching al-Qaeda-linked militants.

‘Remember, these weapons that came into Benghazi were permitted to enter by our armed forces who were blockading the approaches from air and sea,’ Lopez claimed. ‘They were permitted to come in. … [They] knew these weapons were coming in, and that was allowed..

‘The intelligence community was part of that, the Department of State was part of that, and certainly that means that the top leadership of the United States, our national security leadership, and potentially Congress – if they were briefed on this – also knew about this.’

***

‘The White House and senior Congressional members,’ the group wrote in an interim report released Tuesday, ‘deliberately and knowingly pursued a policy that provided material support to terrorist organizations in order to topple a ruler [Muammar Gaddafi] who had been working closely with the West actively to suppress al-Qaeda.’

‘Some look at it as treason,’ said Wayne Simmons, a former CIA officer who participated in the commission’s research.

The West and Its Allies Directly Supported and Armed the Rebels

The UK report confirms that the West and its allies directly supported and armed the rebels:

The combat performance of rebel ground forces was enhanced by personnel and intelligence provided by states such as the UK, France, Turkey, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. For example, Lord Richards told us that the UK “had a few people embedded” with the rebel forces.

Resolution 1973 called on United Nations member states to ensure the “strict implementation of the arms embargo”. However, we were told that the international community turned a blind eye to the supply of weapons to the rebels. Lord Richards highlighted “the degree to which the Emiratis and the Qataris … played a major role in the success of the ground operation.” For example, Qatar supplied French Milan anti­tank missiles to certain rebel groups. We were told that Qatar channelled its weapons to favoured militias rather than to the rebels as a whole.

The REAL Motivation for War

A further insight into French motivations was provided in a freedom of information disclosure by the United States State Department in December 2015. On 2 April 2011, Sidney Blumenthal, adviser and unofficial intelligence analyst to the then United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, reported this conversation with French intelligence officers to the Secretary of State:

According to these individuals Sarkozy’s plans are driven by the following issues:

A desire to gain a greater share of Libya oil production,

Increase French influence in North Africa,

Improve his internal political situation in France,

Provide the French military with an opportunity to reassert its position in the world,

Address the concern of his advisors over Qaddafi’s long term plans to supplant France as the dominant power in Francophone Africa.

The sum of four of the five factors identified by Sidney Blumenthal equated to the French national interest. The fifth factor was President Sarkozy’s political self-interest.

Gaddafi Tried to Step Down … But the West Insisted On Violent Regime Change

Gaddafi had offered to hand over power, but the West instead wanted violent regime change. (The British report notes: “By the summer of 2011, the limited intervention to protect civilians had drifted into an opportunist policy of regime change.”)

The Parliamentary report notes that Gaddaffi may have been attempting to flee the country when he was killed:

Muammar Gaddafi might have been seeking an exit from Libya in February and March 2011. On 21 February 2011, for example, Lord Hague told reporters that he had seen credible information that Muammar Gaddafi was on his way to exile in Venezuela. Concerted action after the telephone calls conducted by Mr Blair might have led to Muammar Gaddafi’s abdication and to a negotiated solution in Libya. It was therefore important to keep the lines of communication open. However, we saw no evidence that the then Prime Minister David Cameron attempted to exploit Mr Blair’s contacts.

***

Political options were available if the UK Government had adhered to the spirit of Resolution 1973, implemented its original campaign plan and influenced its coalition allies to pause military action when Benghazi was secured in March 2011. Political engagement might have delivered civilian protection, regime change and reform at lesser cost to the UK and to Libya. If political engagement had been unsuccessful, the UK and its coalition allies would not have lost anything. Instead, the UK Government focused exclusively on military intervention. In particular, we saw no evidence that it tried to exploit former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s contacts and influence with the Gaddafi regime.

Why Should We Care?

Why should we care?

Well, the House of Commons report confirms that the Libyan war haswrecked the country:

The Libyan economy generated some $75 billion of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2010. This economy produced an average annual per capita income of approximately $12,250, which was comparable to the average income in some European countries. [The former Indian representative to the U.N. notes that, before the war, Libya had less of its population in poverty than the Netherlands. Libyans had access to free health care, education, electricity and interest-free loans, and women had great freedoms that were applauded by the U.N. Human Rights Council]. Libyan Government revenue greatly exceeded expenditure in the 2000s. … The United Nations Human Development Report 2010—a United Nations aggregate measure of health, education and income—ranked Libya as the 53rd most advanced country in the world for human development and as the most advanced country in Africa.

***

In 2014, the most recent year for which reliable figures are available … the average Libyan’s annual income had decreased from $12,250 in 2010 to $7,820. Since 2014, Libya’s economic predicament has reportedly deteriorated. Libya is likely to experience a budget deficit of some 60% of GDP in 2016. The requirement to finance that deficit is rapidly depleting net foreign reserves, which halved from $107 billion in 2013 to $56.8 billion by the end of 2015. Production of crude oil fell to its lowest recorded level in 2015, while oil prices collapsed in the second half of 2014. Inflation increased to 9.2% driven by a 13.7% increase in food prices including a fivefold increase in the price of flour. The United Nations ranked Libya as the world’s 94th most advanced country in its 2015 index of human development, a decline from 53rd place in 2010.

***

In 2016, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimated that out of a total Libyan population of 6.3 million, 3 million people have been impacted by the armed conflict and political instability, and that 2.4 million people require protection and some form of humanitarian assistance. In its World Report 2016, Human Rights Watch stated that Libya is heading towards a humanitarian crisis, with almost 400,000 people internally displaced and increasing disruption to basic services, such as power and fuel supplies. Forces engaged in the conflict continued with impunity to arbitrarily detain, torture, unlawfully kill, indiscriminately attack, abduct and disappear, and forcefully displace people from their homes. The domestic criminal justice system collapsed in most parts of the country, exacerbating the human rights crisis

People-trafficking gangs exploited the lack of effective government after 2011, making Libya a key transit route for illegal migration into Europe and the location of a migrant crisis. In addition to other extremist militant groups, ISIL emerged in Libya in 2014, seizing control of territory around Sirte and setting up terrorist training centres. Human Rights Watch documented unlawful executions by ISIL in Sirte of at least 49 people by methods including decapitation and shooting. The civil war between west and east has waxed and waned with sporadic outbreaks of violence since 2014. In April 2016, United States President Barack Obama described post-intervention Libya as a “shit show”. It is difficult to disagree with this pithy assessment.

The Parliamentary report confirms that the Libyan war – like the Iraq war – has ended up spreading terrorism around the globe:

Libyan weapons and ammunition were trafficked across North and West Africa and the Middle East.

***

The United Nations Panel of Experts appointed to examine the impact of Resolution 1973 identified the presence of ex-Libyan weapons in Algeria, Chad, Egypt, Gaza, Mali, Niger, Tunisia and Syria. The panel concluded that “arms originating from Libya have significantly reinforced the military capacity of terrorist groups operating in Algeria, Egypt, Mali and Tunisia.” In the 2010-15 Parliament, our predecessor Committee noted that the failure to secure the Gaddafi regime’s arms caches had led to “a proliferation of small arms and light weapons, and some heavier artillery, across North and West Africa”. It identified that Libyan small arms had apparently ended up in the hands of Boko Haram militants.

***

In January 2014, Egyptian Islamist insurgents used an ex-Libyan MANPAD to shoot down an Egyptian Army helicopter in the Sinai.

***

The FCO told us that “Political instability in Libya has led to a permissive environment for terrorist groups in which to operate, including ISIL [i.e. ISIS] affiliated groups”. Professor Patrick Porter, Professor of Strategic Studies at the University of Exeter, agreed with the FCO analysis, stating that “a lack of effective government is creating opportunities for the Islamic State.”

***

ISIL has used its presence in Libya to train terrorists. For example, Sefeddine Rezgui, the gunman who killed Western holidaymakers in Tunisia in June 2015, was trained by ISIL at its base in Sabratha along with the two gunmen who killed 22 tourists at the Bardo museum in Tunis. ISIL’s plans may extend beyond terrorism. Vice-Admiral Clive Johnstone, a Royal Navy officer and NATO commander, commented that:

We know they [ISIL] have ambitions to go offshore … There is a horrible opportunity in the future that a misdirected, untargeted round of a very high quality weapons system will just happen to target a cruise liner, or an oil platform, or a container ship.

And the UK report confirms that the Libyan war has created a tidal wave of refugees:

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimated that some 1 million migrants were present in Libya in June 2016. This estimate comprised 425,000 internally displaced Libyans, 250,000 non-Libyan migrants and 250,000 returnees. Most non-Libyan migrants travelled from West Africa, the Horn of Africa, South Asia and the Middle East. The most common countries of origin for non-Libyan migrants were Niger, Egypt, Chad, Ghana and Sudan. Between 1 January and 31 May 2016, 47,851 migrants arrived in Italy after crossing the Mediterranean from Libya. A similar number of migrants attempted the crossing over the same period in 2015. Despite the increased resources committed to Operation Triton, however, crossing the Mediterranean is becoming increasingly hazardous for migrants transiting through Libya. The IOM recorded 2,061 migrants as dead or missing between 1 January and 31 May 2016, which showed a 15% increase in fatalities compared with the same period in 2015.

In other words – just like the Iraq war – the Libyan war was based on fake intelligence, was carried out for reasons having little to do with national security or protecting civilians, destroyed a nation and created a “shit show”, spread terrorism far and wide, and created waves of refugees.

The following are selected quotes from Gaddafi (translated from French by yours truly:)

“The political struggle which ends in the victory of one of the candidates, with, for example 51% of the total of electors’ votes, leads to a dictatorial system, but under the guise of a democratic system. In effect, 49% of the voters are governed by a system they have not chosen, and which, to the contrary, was imposed upon them. And this is dictatorship. This political struggle can also end in the victory of a system which represents the minority, most notably when the electors’ votes are spread out over a certain number of candidates where one gets more votes than any of the others individually. But if we add up the votes of all the “beaten” candidates, it would show a large majority. Despite this, the one with the lowest tally is proclaimed victor, and his success is considered equal and democratic! But in reality, a dictatorship is installed through a disguise of democracy. Here is the truth about the political regimes which dominate the world, today. Their falsification of true democracy appears clearly: these are dictatorial regimes.”

“Direct democracy, when put into practice, is incontestably the ideal method of government. But as a nation, whoever makes up the population, cannot all be reunited to talk about, study, and plan its policies, the idea of direct democracy is illusory and utopian and is divorced from reality. This concept has been replaced by numerous theories of government, such as parliamentary assemblies, party coalitions, referendums; all of which have served to isolate the people from their political activities, to usurp their sovereignty, and confiscate its power to the profit of successive ‘government apparatus’ and conflict, be they individual, class, sect, tribe, Parliament (sic,) or party”

“Property could change hands, the result would be the same: the worker remains a salaried employee as long as he has not reclaimed the rights of his personal production, and so long as it continues to be usurped to the profit of the ‘collective’ or the employer. The final solution to this problem consists in abolishing the working class by the liberation of the man in a condition of servitude through which he is held.”

“He who owns the house you live in, the car you drive in, and who assures you a salary for your subsistence, is, in fact, appropriating your freedom, or, at least, a part thereof. However, liberty is indivisible.”

“Housing is a neccessity for man and his family. His house must belong to no other but him. A man is not free when he inhabits a rented house. Where housing is concerned, the policies followed by the State consists in regulating rental by stopping or raising rents. The only definitive solution, be it a radical one, is accession of property. In socialist society, none can be master of the needs of man. Nobody, in this society, can build housing for anyone but himself and his heirs. The individuals house being one of his fundamental needs, none can build with the goal of renting.”

“Mandatory and standardized education consists of, in fact, an enterprise of mass-stupification of the masses. All states which officially determine the subjects and knowledge to be taught and who thereby organise education, exercise a certain constraint upon the citizens. All the methods of education in the world should be abolished by a worldwide cultural revolution which should aim to emancipate the human spirit from the teaching of fanaticism and the authoritarian orientation of human tastes, of human judgement, and of human intelligence. This does not mean that we must close the schools or, as a merely superficial reading would indicate, turn our backs to education. To the contrary, this means that society should supply all sorts of educational activities, such that children could spontaneously and freely choose the subjects which he wishes to study.”

American Imperialism is alive but perhaps not so well in the middle-east. There are many stories about the region and its mind-boggling complexity in the news these days, but there doesn’t seem to be any over-arching analysis of the entire situation which stretches from the Crimea to the Yellow Sea. The big picture is frightening in scope and potential.

The terms ‘economic crash’, ‘world war III’, and ‘Armageddon’ have rarely ever been so prevalent in the news.

Upon further reflection, the rest of this article will be left to the reader’s imagination. However, the main takeaway should certainly be the fact that this quagmire in Asia has (to a large extent) been engineered to protect the US Dollar. It may not work out that way, in the end.

While you may never have heard of St. Lambert, there is something you should know about it. The city of St. Lambert is a small one, merely 150 years old, counting a population of just over twenty thousand. With an area of only three square miles, it is disproportionately affluent, anglophone, aged, and religious. It is also, arguably the most important city in North America; or it could turn out to be.

“In the 1950s, the development of Saint-Lambert was enhanced with the building of the St. Lambert Locks in the St. Lawrence Seaway, to bypass the smaller Lachine Canal, and this became the most easterly lock in the Seaway.”

Amtrak, the U.S. national passenger rail system, also provides daily service to Saint-Lambert railway station, operating its Adirondack in both directions between Montreal and New York City, using the Victoria Bridge.”

A great many cities in the interior of the continent depend upon the seaway for the transport of goods and commodities. Toronto, Buffalo, Detroit, Cleveland, Milwaukee, and Chicago are all dependant on imports being shipped through the seaway to the Great Lakes. Being the easternmost point in the seaway, St. Lambert is the entry point and the most important link in the supply chain to the interior of the continent.

Starkly, one well-positioned nuclear bomb could put a crater where St. Lambert is and severely hinder the north american supply line to the heartland. The Russians know it, but do the residents of St. Lambert know it? The safe zone for an ICBM strike is about twenty kilometers which means that Montreal and most of the South Shore would become nothing more than a fond memory. Knowing this, one wonders how many of the residents there would endorse antagonizing the Russians over the crisis in the Ukraine.

Some years ago, the psychologist Albert Bandura listed eight mental tricks people play to disengage their consciences so they can perform the acts of violence they would normally abhor.

1. Moral Justification: one is persuaded, for example, that killing the enemy serves a higher moral purpose such as protecting one’s country or serving God’s plan, etc.
2. Euphemistic Labeling: people mask the true nature of behavior they know is unethical, such as labeling “enhanced interrogation” for torture, “servicing the target” for shooting the enemy, and “disinformation” for lying.
3. Advantageous Comparison: as in “What I am doing is not as bad as what they are doing.”
4. Displacement of Responsibility: Uncritically following orders, as in the Nazi concentration camp workers or SS execution squads.
5. Diffusion of Responsibility: when a whole group decides on the unethical action or when the action is divided into many subparts, for example, the building of nuclear weapons. (“All I do is assemble this little electronic part.” Or, “I’m just driving a truck [to] bring supplies—I don’t shoot anybody.”)
6. Disregard or Distortion of Consequences: for example, when harm is inflicted at a distance (as in officers in Montana who guide drones that make “bug splats” in Afghanistan) or dropping bombs from a plane on “targets” even though women and children and old men are being killed below.
7. Dehumanization: labeling the victims of one’s violence as non-human or subhuman, as in calling Vietnamese people “slants” and “gooks” during that war, or Germans “Huns” in WWI, or Arabs “towel heads” and “sand niggers” in the First Gulf War.
8. Attribution of Blame: or blaming the victim who is seen as deserving the mistreatment or seen as having brought it on themselves. For example, “These German civilians we are killing below should not have voted for Hitler; therefore they are to blame for our bombings.

Generally speaking, in the run-up to a war and during it, most or all of these powerful psychological techniques are employed by governments and their militaries on both sides.

The recent drop in the price of oil has had widespread negative consequences for Canada and many other net oil-exporting countries. It has also had dire consequences for the United States. The fracking industry has seen lay-offs, rig closures, and the beginnings of consolidation; the smaller outfits are becoming more and more attractive to large corporate buy-outs as their over-leveraged business models are being slaughtered by dwindling margins. We have been told that lower gas prices are good for the average consumer, but how good can it be if it takes out their entire economy? The petro-dollar scheme, it would appear, is showing signs of stress.

Meanwhile, strategic reserves and storage facilities are filling up fast. It has been estimated that all the extra storage space left in the USA will be full by the end of May. According to the American Petroleum Institute (API) last month saw the biggest build-up of US oil reserves in 34 years (at least.) Most countries that can afford to buy more oil are also adding to their reserves; and who can’t at these prices? Stockpiles are at an all-time high, and not just in the USA; China is also buying a lot of oil while the prices are near record lows. When all the storage capacity is used up, oil will be dumped onto the market driving the price down even further. Yet, the algos aren’t crashing; nobody is putting much pressure on the Saudis to cut production, the markets are not in a panic, and there seems to be a laissez-faire attitude towards the whole debacle. Surely this must be temporary. Maybe things will turn out for the best, but how? We’ll get back to this in a moment.

The Arab spring has brought about many changes in the middle-east. Egypt, Bahrain, and Yemen have seen meaningful change since 2011, and they are not alone. There has been a political awakening in some parts of the region, and there are now new actors taking the stage. ISIS has become a force thanks to the backing (either direct or indirect) of the Saudi and American governments; a renewed call for a caliphate has re-awoken a new generation of Arabs who want to assert themselves internationally. There are grass-roots political movements springing up all around the region and even spilling into northern Africa. It seems that change is all around.

Now that even cars can be hacked, and drones with pistols are scary (even though those with missles are OK,) perhaps people will understand that all military platforms will, too, become hackable and can be turned against the forces (mis)using them.